Actors. This need is occurring just as the traditional state-centred mechanisms of care and the will to care may be being eroded, not least because of the reforms associated with structural adjustment policies (Rowden, 2009). NCDs require adherence to both prevention and treatment regimes. Both are amenable to some degree of individual control (such as not smoking or drinking in moderation), but are equally often determined by the structural factors underpinning the distal pathogenic effects of inequality. These can erode real choices as well as the capacity to make reasoned choices. Further complicating care, treatments for NCDs, even if available, may be Nutlin (3a) chemical information expensive or their supply intermittent. Treatment regimes may require lifetime adherence (e.g. statins for high cholesterol), certain levels of competence (e.g. diabetes blood sugar testing and insulin therapy), expensive technologies or complex surgical techniques (e.g. MRI scanners, laser surgery) or basic palliative medications such as analgesics that are unavailable (Beaglehole et al., 2011, 1442). Moreover, where infectious disease and NCDs coexist, as they so often do in the global South, existing poor health, AZD-8055 chemical information compromised immunity or episodic illness may undermine the capacity to undertake either prevention or treatment activities. Not only may this ignite conditions under which the rhetoric of individual blame may be invoked, but it also ensures, as Livingston’s (2005, 2008, 2012) exemplary work in Botswana has explored, that people need more care, often earlier in their lives and the consequences of illness can be catastrophic in terms of economic and social disenfranchisement.4. Chronic diseases and the politics of culture Another, third way to critically examine the politics of NCDs in the global South is through the lens of `culture’. This immediately begs the question: what is meant here by culture? Do we mean culture in the normative sense, as a `thing’ (for example, a set of health-related practices, beliefs or behaviours) that is shared by a specific cultural group or within a geographical space that is argued to have dominant cultural norms (Dutta, 2008)? It is certainly the case that such a normative perspective has been mobilised in analyses of non-communicable diseases in the global South as elsewhere; especially those that highlight the importance of lifestyle risk factors. Such analyses are often framed by a different transition model to the ones we have already discussed; to the epidemiologic and health transition models we can add the idea of the nutrition transition (Popkin, 1994). This latter model emphasises the relationship between levels of economic growth or development and patterns of dietary behaviour. As Drewnowski and Popkin (1997) explain, diets at one time primarily associated with the rich industrialised nations of the global North ?the socalled `western’ diet, which is high in fats, especially meat and milk products, saturated fats and sugars ?are no longer regarded as being spatially fixed. Put simply, relatively early studies into the structure of global diets in the 1960s and 1970s suggested that as GNP per capita rises within nations so too does the consumption of foods associated with the western diet. More recent analyses, such as that offered by Drewnowski and Popkin (1997; see also Pingali, 2007; Kearney, 2010), add further layers of understanding to this fairly simplistic model by suggesting that a host of other factors, including urbanisa.Actors. This need is occurring just as the traditional state-centred mechanisms of care and the will to care may be being eroded, not least because of the reforms associated with structural adjustment policies (Rowden, 2009). NCDs require adherence to both prevention and treatment regimes. Both are amenable to some degree of individual control (such as not smoking or drinking in moderation), but are equally often determined by the structural factors underpinning the distal pathogenic effects of inequality. These can erode real choices as well as the capacity to make reasoned choices. Further complicating care, treatments for NCDs, even if available, may be expensive or their supply intermittent. Treatment regimes may require lifetime adherence (e.g. statins for high cholesterol), certain levels of competence (e.g. diabetes blood sugar testing and insulin therapy), expensive technologies or complex surgical techniques (e.g. MRI scanners, laser surgery) or basic palliative medications such as analgesics that are unavailable (Beaglehole et al., 2011, 1442). Moreover, where infectious disease and NCDs coexist, as they so often do in the global South, existing poor health, compromised immunity or episodic illness may undermine the capacity to undertake either prevention or treatment activities. Not only may this ignite conditions under which the rhetoric of individual blame may be invoked, but it also ensures, as Livingston’s (2005, 2008, 2012) exemplary work in Botswana has explored, that people need more care, often earlier in their lives and the consequences of illness can be catastrophic in terms of economic and social disenfranchisement.4. Chronic diseases and the politics of culture Another, third way to critically examine the politics of NCDs in the global South is through the lens of `culture’. This immediately begs the question: what is meant here by culture? Do we mean culture in the normative sense, as a `thing’ (for example, a set of health-related practices, beliefs or behaviours) that is shared by a specific cultural group or within a geographical space that is argued to have dominant cultural norms (Dutta, 2008)? It is certainly the case that such a normative perspective has been mobilised in analyses of non-communicable diseases in the global South as elsewhere; especially those that highlight the importance of lifestyle risk factors. Such analyses are often framed by a different transition model to the ones we have already discussed; to the epidemiologic and health transition models we can add the idea of the nutrition transition (Popkin, 1994). This latter model emphasises the relationship between levels of economic growth or development and patterns of dietary behaviour. As Drewnowski and Popkin (1997) explain, diets at one time primarily associated with the rich industrialised nations of the global North ?the socalled `western’ diet, which is high in fats, especially meat and milk products, saturated fats and sugars ?are no longer regarded as being spatially fixed. Put simply, relatively early studies into the structure of global diets in the 1960s and 1970s suggested that as GNP per capita rises within nations so too does the consumption of foods associated with the western diet. More recent analyses, such as that offered by Drewnowski and Popkin (1997; see also Pingali, 2007; Kearney, 2010), add further layers of understanding to this fairly simplistic model by suggesting that a host of other factors, including urbanisa.