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- Author: Christoph Gradmann x
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This chapter discusses two local histories of tuberculosis (TB) to bridge gaps between history and anthropology in global health. Outlining TB’s resurgent interest within the two disciplines from about 1990, the chapter shows that historiographic concern for TB, although limited, arose from increased multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) rates in high-income countries. As for the historical discipline, this resulted in a focus on policies. Medical anthropology, by contrast, took a sustained interest in drug-based disease control and produced myriad studies of DOTS (Directly Observed Therapy, Short-Course) as practice. The local histories we consider – first Tanzania-based treatment trials from 1982 as a successful challenge to the World Health Organization WHO’s primary health care policy and second India’s transition to a DOTS-inspired control programme from 1993 – reveal that TB’s resurgent moment was an important part of local discussions about care, control and development in the age of globalization.
What does global health stem from, when is it born, how does it relate to the contemporary world order? This book explores the origins of global health, a new regime of health intervention in countries of the global South, born around 1990. It proposes an encompassing view of the transition from international public health to global health, bringing together historians and anthropologists to explore the relationship between knowledge, practices and policies. It aims at interrogating two gaps left by historical and anthropological studies of the governance of health outside Europe and North America. The first is a temporal gap between the historiography of international public health through the 1970s and the numerous anthropological studies of global health in the present. The second originates in problems of scale. Macro-inquiries of institutions and politics, and micro-investigations of local configurations, abound. The book relies on a stronger engagement between history and anthropology, i.e. the harnessing of concepts (circulation, scale, transnationalism) crossing both of them, and on four domains of intervention: tuberculosis, mental health, medical genetics and traditional (Asian) medicines. The volume analyses how the new modes of ‘interventions on the life of others’ recently appeared, why they blur the classical divides between North and South and how they relate to the more general neoliberal turn in politics and economy. The book is meant for academics, students and health professionals interested in new discussions about the transnational circulation of drugs, bugs, therapies, biomedical technologies and people in the context of the ‘neoliberal turn’ in development practices.
The introduction explores the ways in which history and anthropology have approached global health and its origins. It suggests that this new regime of health intervention in countries of the global South, born around 1990, differs from the previous regime of international public health at three levels: the actors involved, the targets prioritized and the tools mobilized. The introduction further identifies two gaps left by historical and anthropological studies of the governance of health outside Europe and North America: (1) a temporal gap between the historiography of international public health through the 1970s and the numerous anthropological studies of global health in the present; (2) a gap originating in problems of scale. Macro-inquiries of institutions and politics abound, as do micro-investigations of local configurations. Pleading for a strong engagement between the two disciplines and the harnessing of common concepts, the introduction explores why and how the four domains of interventions selected in the book (tuberculosis, mental health, medical genetics and traditional (Asian) medicines) can contribute to a better understanding of the new modes of ‘interventions on the life of others’ and how they relate to the more general ‘neoliberal turn’.