Report on the current research programme “Biomedicine in Africa”

• Autor(a) principal: Rottenburg, Richard
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Outros Autores: Gerrets, René
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por; eng
• Título da fonte: RECIIS (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/view/841
• topic: Biomedicine; biomedical research; health intervention; health and governance; governing bodies; biomedical taxonomies; embodiments of biomedical technologies; Biomedicina; criação da medicina tradicional; experimentação biomédica; intervenção humanitária; intervenção de saú- de; saúde e governança; órgãos administrativos; taxonomias biomédicas; personificações de tecnologias biomédicas

This research programme examines how the science and practice of biomedicine is shaped through its engagements in various African contexts. We regard biomedicine as a circulating set of technologies, practices, and ideas that – as a by-product of prevention and healing – links individual bodies to the political order. We take Africa to be central for understanding global shifts in the making of bodies and subjectivities as well as of social, political, and juridical forms of governance exactly because the continent is so marginalised in the global political economy and thus represents a site of intense conflict and experimentation. Sociologists and anthropologists of medicine have begun to scrutinise biomedicine through studies of laboratory and clinical life in the West. There has, however, been little scrutiny of biomedicine on the more difficult terrains of non-Western countries where humanitarian crises and complex emergencies involving refugees, wars, and epidemics are common. Our programme, which focuses regionally on Ivory Coast, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, and South Africa, aims to fill this gap.