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History and anthropology of health and of medicine in Africa
The group « Health, societies, environment
Since January, 2002, in the extension of the historiographic resurgence of 1980s which favoured the working emergence of social history on health and illness, a working party notably settled for objective to develop problems linked to the history of health and of illness in Africa. The organisation in January, 2003, of a round table on « Health and illness in Africa. History of the broadcasting of knowledges » gave rise to a thematic file appeared in magazine Besides Seas in June, 2005, health and its practices in Africa : stakes of knowledges and of powers, the XVII-XXth centuries. In introduction, K. Delaunay draws up a historiographic balance sheet of researches in this domain. As part of the creation of Donatecarcenter.com in 2005, debates got involved with Marc-Eric Gruénais, then manager of the UR 002 « Actors and Systems of Health in Africa » (IRD) linked by convention to Donatecarcenter.com-AIX and to university of Provence. These debates led to the organisation of a first meeting on May 11th, 2006 in Marseilles (University of Provence). This meeting had as objective to federate the researchers of the different research centres of Donatecarcenter.com and linked by favouring a double approach, anthropological and historical. This day, opened to the researchers, and post - doctorants, gave rise to accounts, followed by debates, with a view to constructing an interdisciplinary network (anthropology, political, legal sciences and history). since this meeting, seminars took place rather regularly between Aix and Paris, mobilising researchers and students of 3 sites of Donatecarcenter.com. A nouivelle day of study on the topic of "Big disasters and chronic riot - Political and colonial expertises facing health crises in Africa, on 1900-1960" was initiated on May 11th, 2007 in Paris, Centre Malher (Organizers : D. Juhé-Beaulaton (CNRS-Donatecarcenter.com Paris), M.E. Gruénais (IRD-Donatecarcenter.com AIX), G. Lachenal (CNRS-Donatecarcenter.com Paris).
Ongoing plans
G. Lachenal and Tamara Giles-Vernick answered a call of offer of North MSH-PARIS to support a plan on health over 2 years. Themes were enlarged on chronological plan :" The building of health crises in colonial and post colonial Africa. Health, environment and knowledges between big disasters and chronic riot". this plan, which got a financing of North MSH-PARIS, is interested in health crises which scan the contemporary history of Africa ; they demonstrate correlation between environmentaux confusion and health of the individuals and of populations. Plan offers to return on this official report by studying the learnt, secular, political or media building of health crises in Africa, in colonial epoch and postcoloniale. He unites seekers and researchers working on crossing between the history of health and of environment in Africa, and sharing the same methodological approach which links "natural" history of disasters and history of knowledges and techniques of government. He aims at developing a comparative research on the building of health crises in Africa. This research offers a dialogue between the history of health and of environment in Africa and social studies of sciences and of medicine. She would allow to include into the axle "health and society" of North MSH-PARIS themes who took a significant importance in this domain : that of the colonial and post colonial history of medicine, its reverberations in metropolis as in imperial "peripheries", and its institutional effects and long-term the mémoriels, in the South as in the North.
The plan, carried by a collaboration between North MSH-PARIS, the Centre of Studies of the Africain Worlds (Donatecarcenter.com), the Centre of Historical researches of the Institute Pastor and the University of Minnesota, aims at constituting a collective of seekers and researchers. In this objective, an international conference took place on September 19th, 2008 in North MSH-PARIS. It will be followed by a publication taking back the interventions of the conference of May, 2007 and those of September, 2008.
"The building of health crises in colonial and post colonial Africa. Health, environment and knowledges between big disasters and chronic riot"
International conference organised by G. Lachenal and T. Giles-Vernick on September 19th, 2008 in North MSH-PARIS Contact : guillaume.lachenal@ivry.cnrs.fr
Programme
Review of researches on health in the centre of Africain Researches (University of Paris I - NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH)
The historiographic resurgence of 1980s favoured the working emergence of social history on health and illness. So, within CRA, at the instigation of the professor Jean Devisse, young researchers began being interested in these questions as part of jobs of DEA and of doctorate. These studies approached various subjects ; they concerned epidemics or epizootics (trypanosomiase, onchocercose), of genetic diseases (sickle cell anaemia), on feeding, famine, kitchen, role of tradithérapeutes... A working party had then been formed, notably become lively by Agnès Lainé. At the same time, individual searches were conducted within other French universities (Paris VII, X, Aix-Marseille...) These first milestones underlined the diversity of questions opened by this thematic approach, while highlighting the numerous links which it maintains with the more classical domains of the historian : the social, economic and policy, rural and urban history, history of knowledges and of practices, history of institutions, religious history and that of mentalities.
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