Introduction Care is an intrinsic part of ordinary everyday life and a key foundation of social belonging. Encompassing both social practices and emotional ties (Drotbohm & Alber 2015), care defines and creates relationships and, according to the new kinship studies,…
New Special Issue “Im/Mobilities and Dis/Connectivities in Medical Globalization: How Global is Global Health?”
The interdisciplinary, politically contested field of Global Health has often been described as a consequence of, and response to, an intensification of the mobilities of, and connectivities between, people, pathogens, ideas, and infrastructure across national borders and large distances. However,…
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…
An Option with no Choice? The Role of Preventive Technologies in (Dis-)Locating a Malaria Epidemic
In August 2016, during a science-meets-policy summit in Kampala’s famous Serena Hotel, a presentation on the (in-)effectiveness of so-called long-lasting insecticide-treated nets against malaria sparked a heated debate. The presentation was given by an infectious disease specialist from Makerere University…
Arabian Medical Genetics: Of Rare Disorders and Decreasing Oil Rent
Medical genetics has long gone global. From WHO recommendations and travelling bioethics experts and DNA samples, to disease-related Facebook groups and national genome projects, its circulation routes and shades of glocalization are numerous. Among these manifold forms of connectivity, the…
Medical Technologies and Infrastructure: Exploring Im/Mobility and Dis/Connectivity in “Global Health”
There are numerous approaches to defining “Global Health” (Brown, Cueto, and Fee 2006; Farmer et al. 2013; Fassin 2012; Janes and Corbett 2009), a phenomenon that Arthur Kleinman (2010: 1518) considered to be “more a bunch of problems than a…