When the first cases of infection started to appear in southern Germany, Jens Spahn, the Federal Minister of Health, was optimistic about the ability of German health authorities to contact trace and isolate infected persons (n-tv 2020). Everyday life would…
Recovery Adjourned: Curative Belonging between Cameroon and Germany
The point of departure of my fieldwork and the cornerstone of my future Master’s thesis is an event of a personal crisis. Shortly after the completely unexpected death of a close friend of my partner and me, we both tried…
What’s in a name? Diagnostic uncertainty and moral experience in a mental hospital in the Tanga region of Tanzania
“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet” William Shakespeare, “Romeo and Juliet”, act 2, scene 2 “(…) But the label ‘schizophrenia’ is often toxic for those who acquire…
Different Shades of White: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Albinotic Body – Conference Report
Several phenomena have contributed to the increased attention paid to albinism in the past decade. The terrible atrocities inflicted on persons with albinism in East Africa made international headlines. In response, local and global actors – from the Tanzania Albinism…
Transnational Scientific Projects and Racial Politics: The KEMRI Six Case Against the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Contemporary Kenya
“In 1989 the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), one of Africa’s leading health research institutions, formed a landmark partnership with the Wellcome Trust, one of the largest global funders of health research, and the University of Oxford, one of the…
Cancer, Care and Hope – A Hospital Ethnography on Palliative Care in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
The emergence of hospices and palliative care in Africa during the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been tied to the fact that patients were dying from HIV/AIDS in large numbers due to the non-availability of ART at the…