University of Oxford
School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography
Search

Chinese Medicine in East Africa: An Intimacy with Strangers

chinese medicine in east africa
Chinese Medicine in Africa: An Intimacy with Strangers by Elisabeth Hsu
 
Based on fieldwork conducted between 2001-2008 in urban East Africa, this book explores who the patients, practitioners and paraprofessionals doing Chinese medicine were in this early period of renewed China-Africa relations. Rather than taking recourse to the 'placebo effect', the author explains through the spatialities and materialities of the medical procedures provided why -  apart from purchasing the Chinese antimalarial called Artemisinin -  locals would try out their 'alternatively modern' formulas for treating a wide range of post-colonial disorders and seek their sexual enhancement medicines.
 
Epistemologies of Healing Volume 20. Berghahn Books 2022.
 
professor elisabeth hsu 576x768

Professor Elisabeth Hsu

Professor of Anthropology
Elisabeth Hsu is Professor of Anthropology whose teaching and research contributes to the fields of medical anthropology and ethnobotany, language and text critical studies, the phenomenology of the body and the history of East Asian science.

See other recent publications from Anthropology