political, economic, and military rule with a central government authorized to make laws and use
force to maintain order and defend its territory.” (Guest 2014, pg. 542).
With public health relating to state, it also has a correlation to
hegemony
. “State power is
also established through hegemony, which is the ability of a dominant group to create consent
and agreement within a population without the use or threat of force.” (Guest 2014, pg. 544).
Due to public health being on a state level, the states have the power to self-govern, therefore,
some of the health departments are independent or free standing. The health departments serve
multiple public health functions which are shared by other agencies in state government (health
professionals and other health care facilities.) “Within the hegemony of ideas, some thoughts and
actions actually become unthinkable and undoable. Others seem reasonable, necessary, and
desirable; these include collective actions for the greater good of the ‘nation’…” (Guest 2014,
pg. 545). According to the article, biomedicine is a structure of hegemony. The works of
biomedicine is a type of oppositional thinking and is important in creating new theories and
changing public health systems. “To this day, one often hears allegations against anthropology
for its past as the 'handmaiden' of colonialism. As a result of having to defend itself from these
claims, the discipline has become very critical of hegemonic power structures that are involved
in neo-colonial oppression of the afflicted and underprivileged. Biomedicine is a classic example
of such a potentially oppressive structure.” (Campbell 2011).
Public health brings issues to the state, such as
globalization
. Globalization is the
intensification of worldwide interactions and increased movements of people, money and goods
within and across national borders. “in a global economy with increasing flows of people,
money, goods, and ideas state borders are becoming more porous. As a result, states are
increasingly struggling to control who and what enters and leaves their territories. State
