Medical Anthropology in, of, for and with Africa: Three Hotspots

ABSTRACT

Medical anthropologists offer an empirically rich and conceptually nuanced account of how and why people in Africa engage with diverse forces influencing their ways of experiencing illness and practicing medicine in an unequal world. Expanding the research focus from healers to patients and, since 2000, to biomedicine and global health, they have deepened our understanding of the intricate, though not immediately visible networks of connecting, diverging and crisscrossing healing routes within and beyond Africa. In this review article, we revisit three much debated issues in this burgeoning research field: making African global health, framing traditional medicine, and tackling culturalism

KEYWORDS:

• African global health
• culturalism
• traditional medicine

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Notes on contributors

Brigit Obrist

Brigit Obrist is professor of anthropology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, with a joint position at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, also in Basel. Her latest research focuses on the politics of participation in global health. ORCID 000-0001-7576-1291 Correspond with her at: Brigit Obrist, Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Basel, Münsterplatz 19, 4054 Basel, Switzerland. E-Mail: [email protected]

Peter Van Eeuwijk

Peter van Eeuwijk is senior lecturer and researcher in Social Anthropology at the University of Basel, the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland, and the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies of the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His research, in both Indonesia and Tanzania, focuses on the study of aging, health and care. ORCID 0000-0002-7594-0166.