In this book forum, we review three ethnographies of critical global health – Crystal (Cal) Biruk’s Cooking Data, Ramah McKay’s Medicine in the Meantime, and Noémi Tousignant’s Edges of Exposure – and ask the authors to reflect on the nature of labor, the public-private, and race in critical global health, as well as the future of the field. These three books taken together help frame a conversation in medical anthropology and the history of medicine about health data, infrastructure, and care in conditions of scarcity in Africa, a conversation which has been developing over the past decade. As contributors to this conversation, the editors of this forum – Damien Droney, Marissa Mika, and Marlee Tichenor – take the opportunity of the release of these important texts to think about what this conversation has to say about current medical investment and development in Africa, and what kinds of actions our discoveries demand of us.
Contributions:
Review of Cooking Data
Damien Droney
University of Chicago
Review of Medicine in the Meantime
Marissa Mika
University of Global Health Equity
Review of Edges of Exposure
Marlee Tichenor
University of Edinburgh
Crystal (Cal) Biruk
Oberlin College
Noémi Tousignant
University College London
Ramah McKay
University of Pennsylvania
Download pdf of book forum here.
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