Reimagining Science and Statecraft in Postcolonial Kenya
Reimagining Science and Statecraft in Postcolonial Kenya

Author: Denielle Elliott

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-03

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351672363

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This book examines the development of medical sciences in postcolonial Kenya, through the adventures and stories of the controversial Kalenjin scientist Davy Kiprotich Koech. As a collaborative life story project, it privileges African voices and retellings, re-centring the voice of African scientists from the peripheries of storytelling about science, global health research collaborations, national politics, international geopolitical alliances, and medical research. Focusing largely on the development of the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and its collaborations with the US Centers for Disease Control, the Walter Reed Project, Japan’s International Cooperation Agency, the Wellcome Trust, and other international partners, Denielle Elliott and Davy Koech challenge euro-dominant representations of African science and global health in both the contemporary and historical and offer an unconventional account which aims to destabilize colonial and neo-colonial narratives about African science, scientists, and statecraft. The stories force readers to contend with a series of questions including: How do imperial effects shape contemporary medical research and national sovereignty? In which ways do the colonial ghosts of early medical research infuse the struggles of postcolonial scientists to build national scientific projects? How were postcolonial nation-building projects tied up with the dreams and visions of African scientists? And lastly, how might we reimagine African medicine and biosciences? The monograph will be of interest to students, educators, and scholars working in African Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Global Health, Cultural Anthropology, and Medical Anthropology.

Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS
Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS

Author: Eric Mykhalovskiy

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2019-06-01

Total Pages: 373

ISBN-13: 0774860731

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Almost four decades after the scientific discovery of HIV/AIDS, the world continues to grapple with this public health challenge. A successful response requires thinking differently about the epidemic, but what type of thinking can facilitate effective change? Thinking Differently about HIV/AIDS explores the limits of mainstream approaches to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and challenges readers to develop alternate solutions, placing particular emphasis on the value of critical social science perspectives. The contributors investigate traditions of inquiry – governmentality studies, institutional ethnography, Indigenous knowledges, conversation analysis, actor-network theory, critical ethnography, and others – to determine what these perspectives can bring to HIV/AIDS research, policy, and prevention programming. Engaging with various knowledge frameworks, they examine the criminalization of HIV, epidemiological and media constructions of the epidemic, HIV non-disclosure, treatment adherence, and other topics. This book is the first Canadian anthology of critical social science perspectives on HIV/AIDS, demonstrating how and why critical social science is necessary for rethinking research and action required to address the epidemic.

Field Stories
Field Stories

Author: William H. Leggett

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13: 1793643970

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In Field Stories, William H. Leggett and Ida Fadzillah Leggett have pulled together a collection of ethnographic research and classroom experiences from around the world. Drawing on moments both unfamiliar and all too familiar to those accustomed to fieldwork, the contributors to this collection demonstrate in clear, relatable prose how intimate engagements with others in the field can present moments of rich ethnographic value that provide insight into global interconnections.

To Make the Wounded Whole
To Make the Wounded Whole

Author: Dan Royles

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2020-07-21

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1469659514

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In the decades since it was identified in 1981, HIV/AIDS has devastated African American communities. Members of those communities mobilized to fight the epidemic and its consequences from the beginning of the AIDS activist movement. They struggled not only to overcome the stigma and denial surrounding a "white gay disease" in Black America, but also to bring resources to struggling communities that were often dismissed as too "hard to reach." To Make the Wounded Whole offers the first history of African American AIDS activism in all of its depth and breadth. Dan Royles introduces a diverse constellation of activists, including medical professionals, Black gay intellectuals, church pastors, Nation of Islam leaders, recovering drug users, and Black feminists who pursued a wide array of grassroots approaches to slow the epidemic's spread and address its impacts. Through interlinked stories from Philadelphia and Atlanta to South Africa and back again, Royles documents the diverse, creative, and global work of African American activists in the decades-long battle against HIV/AIDS.

Unfolding Narratives of Ubuntu in Southern Africa
Unfolding Narratives of Ubuntu in Southern Africa

Author: Julian Müller

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-06

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 1351055801

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Ubuntu is the African idea of personhood: persons depend on other persons in order to be. This is summarised in the expression: umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, that is, a person is a person through persons. This edited collection illustrates the power of fictionalised representation in reporting research conducted on Ubuntu in Southern Africa. The chapters insert the concept of Ubuntu within the broad intellectual debate of self and community, to demonstrate its intellectual and philosophical value and theoretical grounding in known practices emanating from the African continent, and indeed how it works to unsettle some of our received notions of the self.

African Language Digital Media and Communication
African Language Digital Media and Communication

Author: Abiodun Salawu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-03

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 1351120409

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While some academic attention has been paid to the impact of new digital technologies on African media in the colonial languages of English, French and Portuguese, there is a dearth of research into African language digital communication. This book analyses the online presence of African language media. The chapters in the book focus on the speed, structure, content, navigation and interactivity, operations and performance, and audience of the online media. They also pay particular attention to how social media such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have been appropriated by African language media. Using a wide range of case studies, the contributors assess the challenges of adopting digital technologies by the media, and how the technologies have impacted journalistic practice and media operations. Examining the ability of the African language press to adopt new technologies, this book will be of interest to scholars of media, journalism, communication, social media and culture in Africa.

Food Security for Rural Africa
Food Security for Rural Africa

Author: Terry Leahy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-09-03

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 1351134132

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At least fifty years of projects aimed at the rural poor in Africa have had very little impact. Up to half of the children of these countries are still suffering from stunting and malnutrition. Soil degradation and poor crop yields are ubiquitous. Projects are almost always aimed at helping local people to solve their problems by growing for the market. In some countries, projects link poor villagers into cooperatives to produce a commercial output. In other countries, projects target more competent entrepreneurial villagers. Almost all these projects fail after several years. Even those that are successful make few inroads into the problems. While the slogan 'feeding the farmers first' comes from the Philippines, it is particularly applicable to much of Africa, where household food security can come from household production. This book explains how projects can be designed that increase food security through subsistence production. Focusing on particular people and projects, it gives a sociological analysis of why this is so difficult to manage. This book challenges the models promoted by academics in the field of development studies and argues against the strategies adopted by most donor organizations and government bodies.It explains why commercial projects have been so ubiquitous even though they rarely work. It gives practical tips on how to set up villages and farms to achieve sustainable solutions that also provide plenty of nutritious food. The book is written to be accessible and engaging. For anyone planning to work in the rural areas of Africa, this book is required reading.

Contesting Inequalities, Identities and Rights in Ethiopia
Contesting Inequalities, Identities and Rights in Ethiopia

Author: Data D. Barata

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-11-08

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 1351209981

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This book examines the relationship between inequalities and identities in the context of an unprecedented state advocacy of human rights with a distinct emphasis on (ethnic) group rights in post-civil war Ethiopia. The analysis is set against the background of a dramatic state remaking by a rebellion movement (the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front – EPRDF) that seized control of the Ethiopian state in 1991, after a decisive battlefield victory over an unpopular regime. The new government of former rebels pledged to institute a new system of ethnic self-government that celebrated ethnic diversity with a firm pledge to guarantee basic human rights. After nearly three decades in office, however, the Ethiopian government is challenged by the resilience of identity-based inequalities it ostensibly sought to end, and by protests against its own policies and practices that intensified inequality. The events in Ethiopia, reverberating throughout the Horn of Africa, have inspired heated and often polarized debates between academics, policy experts, political activists, and the media. Data D. Barata contributes to this debate through a nuanced ethnographic analysis of why identities with distinct notions of inequality persist, even after relentless interventions and ideological repudiations. The contestations and struggles over political representation, local governance, cultural identities, land and religion that the book examines are shaped, one way or another, by the global human rights discourse that has inspired millions of Africans to confront entrenched structures of power. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, African studies, political science, sociology and cultural studies.

Contested Criminalities in Zimbabwean Fiction
Contested Criminalities in Zimbabwean Fiction

Author: Tendai Mangena

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0429807562

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This book addresses the ways in which writers deploy the trope of contested criminality to expose Zimbabwe's socially and politically oppressive cultures in a wide range of novels and short stories published in English between 1994 and 2016. Some of the most influential authors that are examined in this book are Yvonne Vera, Petina Gappah, NoViolet Bulawayo, Brian Chikwava, Christopher Mlalazi, Tendai Huchu and Virginia Phiri. The author uses the Zimbabwean experience to engage with critical issues facing the African continent and the world, providing a thoughtful reading of contemporary debates on illegal migration, homophobia, state criminality and gender inequalities. The thematic focus of the book represents a departure from what Schulze-Engler notes elsewhere as postcolonial discourse’s habit of suggesting that the legacies of colonialism and the predominance of the ‘global North’ are responsible for injustice in the Global South. Using the context of Zimbabwe, it is shown that colonialism is not the only image of violence and injustice, but that there are other forms of injustice that are of local origin. Throughout the book, it is argued that in speaking about contested criminalities, writers call attention to the fact that laws are violated, some laws are unjust and some crimes are henceforth justified. In this sense crime, (in)justice and the law are portrayed as unstable concepts.