Medical Anthropology in Africa: The Trouble with a Single Story

ABSTRACT

In the growing number of publications in medical anthropology about sub-Saharan Africa, there is a tendency to tell a single story of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior. The heavy reliance on telling this singular story means that there is very little exposure to other stories. In this article, I draw on five books published in the past five years to illustrate the various components that make up this dominant narrative. I then provide examples of two accounts about medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior in Africa that deviate from this dominant narrative, in order to show the themes that alternative accounts have foregrounded. Ultimately, I make a plea to medical anthropologists to be mindful of the existence of this singular story and to resist the tendency to use its components as scaffolding in their accounts of medicine, health, and health-seeking behavior in Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• health
• ill-health
• medicine
• representation

Notes

1. In Swaziland only doctors are allowed to cut the foreskin. In the initial MOVE team, the doctor travelled across the room doing the cutting, with one nurse stationed at each of the four beds to do the preparation and dressing. There was one nurse for the intake and one nurse stationed at the postoperation recovering room, and another nurse who did the follow up on the second and seventh days.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi

Nolwazi Mkhwanazi is a senior lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand and a member of the advisory committee for Medical and Health Humanities Africa. Nolwazi works primarily in the field of reproductive health with a special interest in Southern Africa and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.