ABSTRACT

“Political economy” is concerned broadly with outlining the prevailing social relations of production and its implications for the creation, distribution, maintenance and transformation of wealth and power. The term first appeared in classic liberal treatises, and it was later reworked in various branches of neoliberal thought, promoting policies of limited government and unfettered market exchange. As it appears in geographic scholarship, however, political economy is generally critical of liberal principles, characterizing capitalist relations as inherently contradictory, unstable and inequitable (Sheppard, 2011). Health geographers have embraced various strands of critical political economy to help explain the persistence of uneven health and health-care risks and outcomes and how relations of power are intimately (i.e., socially and spatially) embedded in processes of wellness and care.