Conjuring the State

A richly detailed and fascinating ethnographic account of the Ecuadorian Servicio de Sanidad (Public Health Service). . . and a persuasive case for the value of studying state formation through the lens of public health.

Conjuring the State is a breathtaking, unforgettable study of the invention of public health in early twentieth-century Ecuador. By focusing on the pragmatics of public health work—what is to be done and how?—at a time when few models existed for it, Clark demonstrates how state systems actually get built, slowly and contentiously, over time. Through meticulous, painstaking work with uncataloged archives, Clark tells a story that is at once deeply sensitive to the nuances of the Ecuadorian case and revelatory of the links between public health and state formation more broadly, with implications up to the present.

This meticulously researched monograph by a foremost expert in Ecuadorian history reframes our understanding of the birth of social medicine in early twentieth-century Latin America while also tracking how Pablo Arturo Suárez, a physician from this small Andean country, helped develop Ecuador’s Servicio de Sanidad while solving the centuries-old mystery of the spread of bubonic plague.