Rethinking Biomedicine and Governance in Africa ─ Contributions from Anthropology

In the domain of health, the relation between bodies, citizenship, nations and governments has changed beyond recognition over the past four decades, especially in Africa. In many regions, populations are now faced with a total lack of medical care, and the disciplinary regimes of modernity are faint memories. In this situation, new critical insights beyond the critique of old modernization and the disciplinary regimes of imperial times are needed. How can we keep up our sophisticated criticism of knowledge regimes and our doubts with regard to narratives of development, when so many people in Africa are dreaming about modernity and are envisioning their own renaissance?

Paul Wenzel Geissler (Prof. PhD) teaches Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he founded a research group dedicated to Anthropologies and Histories of African Biosciences. He is an associate member of the LOST Research Group (anthropology of law, organization, science and technology) at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Richard Rottenburg (Prof. Dr.) holds a chair in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Halle (Germany). He is the director of the LOST Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Julia Zenker (Dr.) is currently teaching at the University of Bern (Switzerland). She is an associate member of the LOST Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her research interests include medical anthropology, HIV/AIDS, bureaucracy and modernity studies.