Book announcement: The Politics of Health in Senegal

Dear WHOMers,

This is a book by a friend who is a medical anthropologist with definite historical leanings who works on women’s health in Senegal.
Best wishes,
Elise
—
Elise Audrey Carpenter
School of Medicine, Class of 2010
Ph.D., History and Sociology of Science
University of Pennsylvania

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Politics of Health in Senegal

Your Pocket is What Cures You: The Politics of Health in Senegal

Ellen E. Foley

Rutgers University Press

Paper $23.95 | ISBN 978-0-8135-4668-1

Cloth $72.00 | ISBN 978-0-8135-4667-4 | 204 pages | 6 x 9

Publication: January 2010

In the wake of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s and health
reforms in the 1990s, the majority of sub-Saharan African governments
spend less than ten dollars per capita on health annually, and many
Africans have limited access to basic medical care. Using a
community-level approach, Your Pocket is What Cures You: The Politics
of Health in Senegal (Rutgers University Press January 2010), by
anthropologist Ellen E. Foley, analyzes the implementation of global
health policies and how they become intertwined with existing social
and political inequalities in Senegal.

“Your Pocket is What Cures You” examines qualitative shifts in health
and healing spurred by these reforms, and analyzes the dilemmas they
create for health professionals and patients alike. It also explores
how cultural frameworks, particularly those stemming from Islam and
Wolof ethnomedicine, are central to understanding how people manage
vulnerability to ill health.

While offering a critique of neoliberal health policies, “Your Pocket
is What Cures You” remains grounded in ethnography to highlight the
struggles of men and women who are precariously balanced on twin
precipices of crumbling health systems and economic decline. Their
stories demonstrate what happens when market-based health reforms
collide with material, political, and social realities in African
societies.

A VOLUME IN THE STUDIES IN MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY SERIES

Edited by Mac Marshall

Ellen E. Foley, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
International Development and Social Change
Clark Universiy
950 Main St.
Worcester, MA 01610
Tel. 508-421-3815
E-mail: efoley@clarku.edu