Overview

Medical research has been central to biomedicine in Africa for over a century, and Africa, along with other tropical areas, has been crucial to the development of medical science. At present, study populations in Africa participate in an increasing number of medical research projects and clinical trials, run by both public institutions and private companies. Global debates about the politics and ethics of this research are growing and local concerns are prompting calls for social studies of the “trial communities” produced by this scientific work. Drawing on rich, ethnographic and historiographic material, this volume represents the emergent field of anthropological inquiry that links Africanist ethnography to recent concerns with science, the state, and the culture of late capitalism in Africa.

Full Product Details

Author:   P. Wenzel Geissler ,  Catherine Molyneux
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
Weight:   0.807kg
ISBN:  

9780857450920

ISBN 10:   0857450921
Pages:   508
Publication Date:   01 September 2011
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Studying trial communities: anthropological and historical inquiries into ethos, politics and economy of medical research in Africa P. Wenzel Geissler This chapter is available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of the Wellcome Trust. Engagements Chapter 1. Writing Knowledge and Acknowledgement: Possibilities in Medical Research Susan Reynolds Whyte Chapter 2. Can one Rely on Knowledge? Marilyn Strathern Chapter 3. Being 'with MRC': Infant Care and the Social Meanings of Cohort Membership in Gambia's Plural Therapeutic Landscapes Melissa Leach and James Fairhead Chapter 4. Contextualising Ethics in AIDS Research: or, the Morality of Knowledge Production in Ethnographic Fieldwork on 'the Unspeakable' Hansjoerg Dilger Chapter 5. Testing a New Drug for Leprosy: Clofazimine and its Precursors in Ireland and Nigeria, 1944-1966 John Manton Chapter 6. Elucidating Ethics in Practice -- Focus on Accountability George Ulrich Evidence Chapter 7. When Physicians Meet: Local Medical Knowledge and Global Public Goods Steven Feierman Chapter 8. The Plausibility Design, Quasi-Experiments, and Real World Research: a Case Study from the Interdisciplinary Monitoring Project for Antimalarial Combination Treatment in Tanzania S. Patrick Kachur Chapter 9. Remember Bambali: Evidence, Ethics and the Co-Production of Truth Ann Kelly Chapter 10. Foetuses, Facts and Frictions: Insights from Ultrasound Research in Tanzania Babette Muller-Rockstroh Chapter 11. Healers and Scientists: The Epistemological Politics of Research about Medicinal Plants in Tanzania or 'Moving Away from Traditional Medicine' Stacey A. Langwick Chapter 12. Parasite Lost. Remembering Modern Times with Kenyan Government Medical Scientists P. Wenzel Geissler Chapter 13. Is the Sharia of the Doctors Killing the People? A Local Debate on Ethics and the Control of HIV/AIDS in a Rural Area in Kenya Suzette Heald Politics Chapter 14. The Historical Interface between the State and Medical Science in Africa: Kenya's Case Kenneth S. Ombongi Chapter 15. The intimate rules of the French Cooperation: Morality, Race and the Postcolonial Division of Scientific Work at the Pasteur Institute of Cameroon Guillaume Lachenal Chapter 16. The Mosquito Taken at the Beer-Hall': Malaria Research and Control on Zambia's Copperbelt Lyn Schumaker Chapter 17. Trial Communities: HIV and Therapeutic Citizenship in West Africa Vin-Kim Nguyen Chapter 18. Differences in Medicine, Differences in Ethics: or, When is it Research and When is it Kidnapping or is That Even the Right Question? Luise White Index

Reviews

This is an extremely interesting and innovative collection with unusual empirical richness, with ethical and epistemological discussions cutting across anthropology, medicine, history, epidemiology and other disciplines.A * Lotte Meinert, Department of Anthropology, Aarhus University

Author Information

P. Wenzel Geissler teaches social anthropology at the University of Oslo and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He studied medical zoology in Hamburg and Copenhagen and social anthropology in Copenhagen and Cambridge. Since 1993 he has worked in western Kenya, conducting first medical research and then several years of ethnographic fieldwork. Currently he is writing an ethnography of post-colonial scientific research in Kisumu, Kenya.

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