Authors

Discussion

In the informality scholarship, especially the one focusing on post-Soviet spaces, informal practices are conceptualized as a response to bad policies or failed politico-economic initiatives. This research views infromality as a compensation mechanism for the gaps in the official governing system that eventually supports the dysfunctional system. However, Science and Technology Studies (STS) points out how any initiative is accommodated by the range of informal practices and tacit knowledge that shape back the composition of the system itself. Drawing on STS, I explore how new medical practices become enabled by the range of informal practices. I do so by focusing on the work of two private clinics in Russia.

Recently, more and more private clinics started to claim to follow the principles of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and bring better care. Historically EBM has not been a part of the Soviet and later Russian medical system and has been recently become an issue of political concern. In the presentation, I show how private clinics dwelling on disruptions of Russian health care use their private spaces to practice EBM. Clinics’ staff constantly improvise to follow foreign guidelines, implement their knowledge of recent academic articles, and avoid the strict fulfillment of Russian medical standards. Hence, the private clinics enter the discussions of what is considered to be reliable evidence and good care.