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Beyond Surgery

Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital

Beyond Surgery

Injury, Healing, and Religion at an Ethiopian Hospital

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backward culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery, medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation.
 
Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight. As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling “culture” the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical access in rural Africa. Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

Read the introduction.


256 pages | 10 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2017

African Studies

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Religion: Religion and Society

Women's Studies

Reviews

“The genius of ethnography often involves finding a practice or idea the examination of which conjures up unexpected larger insights. Hannig finds just this kind of topic in fistula repair surgery in northern Ethiopia—both for the cultural worlds of women patients and foreign missionary doctors. Beyond Surgery is a major achievement of writing and analysis.”

Donald L. Donham, University of California, Davis

“In this incisive and immensely insightful study, Hannig moves beyond the hype of heroic surgery to examine the complex social, moral, and aesthetic landscape—the interplay of science and sanctity, loss and recovery—that comprises the intricate work of care, here as everywhere.”

Jean Comaroff, Harvard University

“Hannig has written an important and deeply touching testament to the practical importance of long-term careful ethnographic research in global health. Beyond Surgery has profound implications for debates on global health disparities. It deserves to be read by anthropologists and practitioners alike.”

Stacey Langwick, Cornell University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Kin, Society, and Religion
Chapter One: A Malleable World: Injury, Care, and Belonging
Interlude: Yashume
Chapter Two: The Pure and the Pious: Flow, Containment, and Transgression
Part Two: Fistula Treatment and the Institution
Chapter Three: Mending the Mothers of Ethiopia: Institutional Roots, Logic, and Mission
Interlude: Poison
Chapter Four: Clinical Tracks: Moving through Surgery
Part Three: Beyond Surgery
Chapter Five: Healing and Reforming: The Making of the Modern Clinical Subject
Interlude: Conversion
Chapter Six: From Orphan to Apprentice: Crafting Patient Entrepreneurs at Desta Mender
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Awards

Society for Medical Anthropology: Eileen Basker Memorial Prize
Won

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