Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwe: HIV/AIDS and Traditional Healers

by Simmons, David S.

• ISBN13: 9780826518071
• ISBN10: 0826518079
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-02-24
• Publisher: Longleaf Pr

Summary

As sub-Saharan Africa continues to confront the runaway epidemic of HIV/AIDS, traditional healers have been tapped as collaborators in prevention and education efforts. The terms of this collaboration, however, are far from settled and continually contested. As Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabwedemonstrates, serious questions continue to linger in the medical community since the explosion of the disease nearly thirty years ago. Are healers obstacles to health development? Do their explanations for the disease disregard biomedical science? Can the worlds of traditional healing and modern medicine coexist and cooperate? Combining anthropological, historical, and public health perspectives, Modernizing Medicine in Zimbabweexplores the intersection of African healing traditions and Western health development, emphasizing the role of this historical relationship in current debates about HIV/AIDS. Drawing on diverse sources including colonial records, missionary correspondence, international health policy reports, and interviews with traditional healers, anthropologist David S. Simmons demonstrates the remarkable adaptive qualities of these disparate communities as they try to meet the urgent needs of the people.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Misfortunes without End: An Introduction to AIDS in Zimbabwe	p. 1
The State of Health and the Health of the State: A Social Demography of AIDS in Zimbabwe
Maladies of Modernity: Economic Structural Adjustment, HIV/AIDS, and the State of Health	p. 25
Conspiracy Theories: The So-Called AIDS Virus	p. 51
History and Modernity: The Historical Constitution of N'anga as Dangerous Subjects
Godly Medicine, Pagan Superstition, and the Colonial State	p. 11
N'anga and the Workings of Vernacular Modernity	p. 102
Managing Modernity: N'anga Responses to HIV/AIDS
Translating Policy into Action: ZINATHA and HIV/AIDS Education	p. 131
N'anga Theories of Infectious Diseases	p. 149
Of Markets and Medicine: The Changing Significance of Zimbabwean Muti in the Age of Intensified Globalization	p. 169
Conclusion: Vernacular Modernity, Explanatory Models, and HIV/AIDS	p. 185
Notes	p. 197
References	p. 203
Index	p. 219
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