Biomedicine as a Contested Site

Some Revelations in Imperial Contexts

Edited by Poonam Bala

Not available to order

Publication date:

16 October 2008

Length of book:

196 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739131381

While literature on medicine and colonialism has increased rapidly in the past nearly two decades, this volume presents yet another way of looking at ideas of medicine, health, and disease. It portrays the role played by power in various ways in which biomedicine became a site of contested ventures_a site which saw an interplay of medicine, ruling ideologies, and resistance by indigenous populations. Ideas of disease and health range from control of infectious diseases and epidemics, medications and indigenous therapeutics, clinical medicine and surgery, to reproductive health, with the added dimension of medical pluralism and elites as enabling these interactions and processes. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students of history, sociology, anthropology, medicine, and public health. With essays on different regions around the world, it will serve as a guide to scholars and students in colonial studies, history of medicine, and world history.

Chapter 1 Introduction: Contested Ventures: Biomedicine in Colonial Contexts
Chapter 2 1. Colonizing Mother Egypt, Domesticating Egyptian Mothers
Chapter 3 2. Defying Medical Autonomy: Indigenous Elites and Medicine in Colonial India
Chapter 4 3. Medical Knowledge and Professional Power: From the Luso-Brazilian Context to Imperial Brazil
Chapter 5 4. The Invincible Generals: Disease and the Fight for Empire in Cuba, 1868 to 1898
Chapter 6 5. The White Man in the Bedroom: Contraception and Resistance on Commercial Farms in Colonial Rhodesia
Chapter 7 6. Translations and Transformations: Toward Creating New Men in Early Twentieth-Century China
Chapter 8 7. Rejected or Elected? Processes of Therapeutic Selection and Colonial Medicines in French Vietnam, 1905-39
Chapter 9 8. Articulating Medical Ideas: Medicine and Medical Education in New Spain
Chapter 10 9. Disease, Doctors, and De beers Capitalists: Smallpox and Scandal in Colonial South Africa during the Mineral Revolution and British Imperialism, c. 1882-1883
Chapter 11 10. Submitting to Surgery in the 1890s: Four Vignettes

This remarkable collective scholarship demonstrates how despite the dominance of bio-power and its exclusionary and exploitative tactics, a sub-altern health contestation evolved in the context of medical pluralism in colonial times. This edited volume isa valuable addition to the repertoire of medical history....