Leisure as an essential part of health care? Lessons from a socialist balnear resort

Abstract (English)

One of the emblematic features of the socialist state was its preventive and mass accessible health policy system that considered leisure time in its recuperative aspect, core to a healthy and productive workforce. Balneology and medical climatology were branches of medical sciences that were greatly developed as part of this vision of leisure and preventive treatment. This paper elaborates on the history of Amara, a balnear resort in Romania, during the socialist period of rapid development and the postsocialist period of decline that followed. In addition to treatment facilities, the hotels built mainly in the 70s featured a wide range of social and cultural services and activities. Currently, along with the collapse of the state ensured holidays and privatization of the main hotels, the resort no longer functions for prevention or leisure. The public spaces of the resort where cultural and social activities used to take place are abandoned or transformed. The population that comes for treatment is generally elderly, with acute or chronic illnesses, and they use this opportunity of (partially) free state vouchers mainly to escape their routine daily lives. Which is to say that despite their illness they do not seek only medical healing, but also a sense of well-being through socialization and belonging. By comparing the socialist system of state sponsored balnear therapeutic holidays with the actual one we are questioning current understandings of health, illness, care, individual and collective bodies as conceptualized and practiced in the way the public health system functions today.