The complex, highly problematic, often thorny dynamics of trust and authority are central to the anthropological study of legitimacy. In this book, this sine qua non runs across the in-depth examination of the ways in which healthcare and public health are managed by the authorities and experienced by the people on the ground in urban Europe, the USA, India, Africa, Latin America and the Far and Middle East. This book brings comparatively together anthropological studies on healthcare and public health rigorously based on in-depth empirical knowledge. Inspired by the current debate on legitimacy, legitimation and de-legitimation, the contributions do not refrain from taking into account the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the health systems under study, but carefully avoid letting this issue monopolise the discussion. This book raises key challenges to our understanding of healthcare practices and the governance of public health. With a keen eye on urban life, its inequalities and the ever-expanding gap between rulers and the ruled, the findings address important questions on the complex ways in which authorities gain, keep, or lose the publics trust.

Italo Pardo is Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. He established and co-edits the journalUrbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography and co-founded and presides over the not-for-profit association, International Urban Symposium-IUS.

Giuliana B. Prato is Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, UK. She chairs the Commission on Urban Anthropology (IUAES), co-founded the International Urban Symposium-IUS, of which she is Secretary-Treasurer, and co-founded and serves on the Board ofUrbanities-Journal of Urban Ethnography.

Chapter 1. IntroductionOn Legitimacy. Healthcare and Public Safety.- Chapter 2. Health Inequalities and Ethics of Responsibility: A Comparative Ethnography.- Chapter 3. Misgovernance Kills: Italian Evidence.- Chapter 4. The Fragility of Legitimacy: Access to Health Care in Manantali, Mali. Chapter 5. "I Chose this Other Way": An Ethnographic Approach to Medical Pluralism Within the Context of Greek Cancer Care.- Chapter 6. Covid-19 Pandemic, Hydroxychloroquine and Healthcare System in Turkey.- Chapter 7. Negotiating Power over Human Bodies: Populism, People and the Politics of Health in Delhi.- Chapter 8. The Poverty of Opportunity: Where Are We Going; Where Have We Been.- Chapter 9. The Views of Selected Tennesseans on Universal Health Care as a Right.- Chapter 10. The Biopolitics of Complementary Spiritual Healing in South Korea and Israel.- Chapter 11. Health Sovereignty in West-Central Mexico: Legitimacy from the Grassroots.- Chapter 12. Disabled People and Access to the Labour Market: The Case of Greece.- Chapter 13. Managing Public Health in a Fragile Consociation: Lebanon between Wars, Explosions and the Covid-19 Pandemic.- Chapter 14. Interrogating the Public Health Approach: Lessons from the Field of Urban Violence.- Chapter 15. Maintaining the Health of the Public: Containing the Threat of Terrorist Resurgence in Contemporary Peru.