This is a lively and original book, which treats Western biomedical discourse about illness in Africa as a cultural system that constructed "the African" out of widely varying, and sometimes improbable, materials. Referring mainly to British dependencies in East and Central Africa in the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, it draws on diverse sources ranging from court records and medical journals to fund-raising posters and "jungle doctor" cartoons. Curing Their Ills brings refreshing concreteness and dynamism ...
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This is a lively and original book, which treats Western biomedical discourse about illness in Africa as a cultural system that constructed "the African" out of widely varying, and sometimes improbable, materials. Referring mainly to British dependencies in East and Central Africa in the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, it draws on diverse sources ranging from court records and medical journals to fund-raising posters and "jungle doctor" cartoons. Curing Their Ills brings refreshing concreteness and dynamism to the discussion of European attitudes toward their others, as it traces the shifts and variations in medical discourse on African illness. Among the topics the book covers are the differences between missionary medicine, which emphasized individual responsibility for sin and disease, and secular medicine, which tended toward an ethnic model of collective pathology; leprosy and the construction of the social role of "the leper"; and the struggle to define insanity in a context of great ignorance about what the "normal African" was like and a determination to crush indigenous beliefs about bewitchment. The underlying assumption of this discourse was that disease was produced by the disintegration and degeneration of "tribal" cultures, which was seen to be occurring in the process of individualization and modernization. This was a cultural rather than a materialist model, the argument being that Africans were made sick not by the material changes to their lives and environment, but by their cultural "maladaptation" to modern life. The "scientific" discourse about the biological inferiority of "the African," traced by one school of scientists to defects in the frontal lobe, makes painful reading today; it persisted into the 1950s.
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Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $3.90, fair condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Stanford University Press.
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Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $6.92, good condition, Sold by Midtown Scholar Bookstore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Harrisburg, PA, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Stanford University Press.
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Good-Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name-GOOD PAPERBACK Standard-sized.
Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $9.00, good condition, Sold by Eighth Day Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Wichita, KS, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $10.39, good condition, Sold by SurplusTextSeller rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Columbia, MO, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Stanford University Press.
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Good. Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes).
Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $16.00, very good condition, Sold by Burke's Book Store rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Memphis, TN, UNITED STATES, published 1991 by Stanford Univ Pr.
Add this copy of Curing Their Ills. Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $23.95, very good condition, Sold by Lawrence Jones rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Nobby Beach, QLD, AUSTRALIA, published 1991 by Stanford University Press.
Add this copy of Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness to cart. $25.77, very good condition, Sold by Cambridge Rare Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Cambridge, Gloucestershire, UNITED KINGDOM, published 1991 by Polity.
