Johanna Tayloe Crane

The prevalence of HIV and AIDS in Africa was a looming problem at the turn of the millennium, but heavy American investment in treatment for Africans under George W. Bush’s PEPFAR program addressed the acute symptoms. However, like much in life, smaller, no-less-significant problems exploded soon afterwards, particularly in the vein of post-colonialism.

Was this a scientific partnership of equals or was it a contribution from a superior to an inferior? Does PEPFAR create a health culture of collaboration? Crane’s book addresses these issues at length by performing an ethnology, a cultural analysis around research based on interviews in the field. Her findings relevantly address the future of such aid in the trending field of global health.

I generally find medical anthropologies difficult to read because they discuss inequities that surround my field of work. However, I welcome these challenges because they force me to think about uncomfortable issues. Does global aid truly help the African culture advance and flourish? If not, how can it achieve these aims better? These are not easy issues because few Americans – myself included – have never travelled to this great continent.

Yet there exists so much human potential there. How many intellects the size of Marie Curie or Albert Einstein exist on this so-called “dark continent,” unused because they are uneducated – or because their research interests are unfunded? Again and again, Crane brings out that most Africans in the field just long to be treated like scientific equals in grants and publishing. This simple wish is not extreme or unreasonable, but Western pride after centuries of colonial oppression context seems to neglect this desire.

Medical anthropologists will celebrate this work, but the people who need to read it most are the medical students and researchers involved in global health. These groups make up the cultural structure explored and critiqued here. Like any ethnography, this book is an act of scientific exploration, not an opinion piece driven by an agenda. Will science respond appropriately to such data-filled critiques or continue in ignorance? Will global health science by the Americans become public health science for the Africans?… (más)