Appel à com : "Policy Circulation and Healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa: contextualizing disease intervention, impacts and treatment"

[Madeleine L.]

Call for Papers: Session Proposal, American Anthropological Association 2010
Conference

*Policy Circulation and Healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa: contextualizing
disease intervention, impacts, and treatment*

For the 2010 AAA Conference we invite papers contributing to knowledge of
global health policy in southern Africa and how it facilitates, disrupts, or
maintains flows of life-saving drugs for underserved populations. When
viewed through the lens of large-scale disease interventions the concept of
circulation draws attention to issues of globalization, international
economic development, and donor-dependent health care systems. Health policy
concerning widespread chronic and infectious disease like HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria is associated with access to services for
underserved populations-making treatment available, and prolonging life.
Politics and biomedicine intersect with Western foreign aid structures,
where focusing on policy reform defines to whom which services are available
and on what terms. Interpretations of policy occur many times over as new
rules circulate among planners, government officials, international and
non-governmental organizations, clinicians, patients, and the public. Policy
is made tangible through the documentation of numbers, commodities, and
bodies-and frequently measurable only after implementation. For many
anthropologists in the field "best practices" and "sustainability" in health
intervention programs seem elusive. Does social change occur as a result of
large scale disease intervention? How have biomedicine and politics
converged and impacted landscapes of healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa? How
is policy translated, re/configured, or re/contextualized at the community
level? How have previous victims of exclusion claimed human and/or medical
rights? How have these engagements re/produced transformations of identity,
family, or subjectivity? Interested individuals should email a 250-word
abstract to the session organizer, Christian Reed, at
christianreed@gmail.com by March 26th at 5:00pm (United States EST).