Politics Culture And Medicine In Malawi

This book examines how politics - democratic and dictatorial, culture - traditional and modern, and medicine - African and western interact in modern-day Malawi. It places medical history into cultural and political perspective and illustrates how culture influences medical perceptions and expectations. It further contextualises culture, politics and medicine within a climate where the HIV/Aids pandemic permeates all aspects of life in Malawi.

After thirty years of autocratic rule under "Life President" Kamuzu Banda, Malawians experienced a transition to multi-party democracy in 1994. A new constitution and several democratic institutions promised a new dawn in a country ravaged by poverty and injustice. This book presents original research on the economic, social, political and cultural consequences of the new era. A new generation of scholars, most of them from Malawi, cover virtually every issue causing debate in the New Malawi: poverty and hunger, the plight of civil servants, the role of the judiciary, political intolerance and hate speech, popular music as a form of protest, clergy activism, voluntary associations and ethnic revival, responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and controversies over women's rights. Both chameleon-like leaders and the donors of Malawi's foreign aid come under critical scrutiny for supporting superficial democratization. The book ends with a rare public statement on the New Malawi by Jack Mapanje, Malawi'sinternationally acclaimed writer.

With the death of John McCracken in 2017, Malawi lost a pre-eminent historian. This book celebrates McCracken’s contribution to the study of Malawi’s history and seeks to build on his legacy. Part of his genius was that he identified themes that hold the key to understanding the history of Malawi in its broader perspective. The authors contributing to this volume address these themes, assessing the progress of historiography and setting an agenda for the further advance of historical studies. The book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and all who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of Malawi’s past and present.

This open access book introduces the theoretical frameworks and academic debates concerning sexual cultural practices and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It shows how these frameworks have been applied in a practical sense in Africa to investigate sexual cultural practices and their link with HIV/AIDS. The author provides an overview of both the field of study and the methods used during fieldwork. Finally, it assesses the implications of the findings for the conceptualization and provision of current and future HIV/AIDS policies and programs in Africa. This monograph will appeal to policy makers and practitioners working in the field of HIV/AIDS in the Global South as well as academics and students.

4e de couv.: This anthropology addresses persisting questions social anthropologist, historians, and political scientists working in African societies have been confronted with: Do spirits enter the scene after political have failed as a relapse into an allegedly non-modern condition? Or do they precede colonial processes of political transformation, as classis theories of modernization try to establish? The volume seeks to extend the reflections on the relationship of religious phenomena in the socio-political sphere in African societies. It presents case studies which focus on the concepts of modernity, power, and violence, adding the notion of healing to this context and investigating their empirical correlations.

The Culture of AIDS in Africa presents 30 chapters offering a multifaceted, nuanced, and deeply affective portrait of the relationship between HIV/AIDS and the arts in Africa, including source material such as song lyrics and interviews.

In Cooking Data Crystal Biruk offers an ethnographic account of research into the demographics of HIV and AIDS in Malawi to rethink the production of quantitative health data. While research practices are often understood within a clean/dirty binary, Biruk shows that data are never clean; rather, they are always “cooked” during their production and inevitably entangled with the lives of those who produce them. Examining how the relationships among fieldworkers, supervisors, respondents, and foreign demographers shape data, Biruk examines the ways in which units of information—such as survey questions and numbers written onto questionnaires by fieldworkers—acquire value as statistics that go on to shape national AIDS policy. Her approach illustrates how on-the-ground dynamics and research cultures mediate the production of global health statistics in ways that impact local economies and formulations of power and expertise.

This book offers an innovative engagement with the diverse histories of colonial and indigenous medicines. Engagement with different kinds of colonialism and varied indigenous socio-political cultures has led to a wide range of approaches and increasingly distinct traditions of historical writing about colonial and indigenous modes of healing have emerged in the various regions formerly ruled by different colonial powers. The volume offers a much-needed opportunity to explore new conceptual perspectives and encourages critical reflection on how scholars’ research specialisms have influenced their approaches to the history of medicine and healing. The book includes contributions on different geographical regions in Asia, Africa and the Americas and within the varied contexts of Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and British colonialisms. It deals with issues such as internal colonialism, the plural history of objects, transregional circulation and entanglement, and the historicisation of medical historiography. The chapters in the volume explore the scope for conceptual interaction between authors from diverse disciplines and different regions, highlighting the synergies and thematic commonalities as well as differences and divergences.