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Chinese Medicine in East Africa

An Intimacy with Strangers

Elisabeth Hsu author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Berghahn Books

Published:8th Jul '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Chinese Medicine in East Africa cover

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.

“Elisabeth Hsu expertly weaves ethnography and theory to provide the reader with a lived experience of a journey of Chinese medical practices in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda … Hsu's work is rich with anthropological theory to help make meaning of her findings and, in turn, generously contributes to theory by virtue of the extensive findings and analyses presented.”• Paul I Kadetz, University of Global Health Equity

“This is a wonderful and very compelling book. Content is exhilarating, rich and intense throughout in a highly original fashion.”• Julie Laplante, University of Ottowa

ISBN: 9781800735569

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

440 pages