Global Health, Medicine, and Medical Research in Africa

P. Wenzel Geissler and Catherine Molyneux, eds. Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa. New York: Berghahn Books, 201 1. x + 498 pp. Photographs. Index. $99.00. Cloth. $95.00. EBook.Hansjorg Dilger, Abdoulaye Kanye, and Stacey A. Langwick, eds. Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa: Transnational Health and Healing. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. vi + 348 pp. Acknowledgments. Contributors. Index. $80.00. Cloth $27.95. Paper. EBook. $22.99.Tamara Giles-Vernick and James L. A. Webb, Jr., eds. Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease Control. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013. viii + 246 pp. Contributors. Index. $80.00. Cloth. $32.95. Paper.I can usually gauge my enthusiasm for a book by how dog-eared, spinebroken, and scrawled upon it is. An entirely unscientific measure, no doubt, but reliable all the same. It follows that the more beat-up and gutter-dragged a book looks, the more inspired or useful I found it. Three new edited volumes broadly revolving around issues of global health, medicine, history, and anthropology in Africa satisfied me in very different ways. And I can report that all of the books reviewed in this essay have been defaced with multiple colors of pen ink as I've read and noted (sometimes arguing in the margins); I've also flagged many new citations to look up, and made notes to go back and reread some older works. Although each of these books has a particular target audience, there is still a great mass of readers-medical historians or anthropologists of Africa, global health practitioners, those who teach classes in global health or African studies-who will find selected chapters in each of these books valuable.Despite some general thematic overlaps, the books vary substantially in their regional foci, their theoretical orientation, and their intended audience. The most explicitly anthropological book is Dilger, Kanye, and Langwick's Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa. Not only are a majority of the contributors anthropologists, but the chapters also speak to one another through a common language of shared references and overlapping questions. For anyone looking for a book to assign to undergraduates, or to recommend to students who are interested in the field of global health, the collection edited by Giles-Vernick and Webb, Global Health in Africa, is the obvious choice. It is clearly written and the brief chapters cover a range of topics both historical and current; students will have a sense of the field without being put off by too much theory or technical language. For anyone with an interest in medical research in Africa-be it historical or modern, doing it or studying it-the volume by Geissler and Molyneux is particularly worthwhile. Evidence, Ethos, and Experiment is the longest of the three books and its value is in the diversity of topics, locations, and disciplines represented. (Be warned, though, that this book is most likely to leave you with a pile of citations to look up.)Medicine, Mobility, and Power in Global Africa is organized into thematic parts and twelve chapters (part 1, "Scale as an Effect of Power"; part 2, "Alternative Forms of Globality"; and part 3, "Moving Through the Gaps"). The volume includes chapters on Tanzania, Senegal, Nigeria, Mali, Togo, Niger, Ghana, Somaliland, and Kenya, in addition to a few chapters addressing themes that crisscross the continent. This is a good spread of countries, and it is especially useful to have English sources on countries such as Mali, Togo, and Niger. The emphasis on mobilities allows for a focus on diasporic communities and transnational case studies.Chapters near the end of the book were particularly interesting for a nonanthropologist, and exposed me to both new empirical information and new authors. Adeline Masquelier's "Public Health or Public Threat?" presents a nuanced explanation for why polio eradication efforts have been stalled in Niger. …