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

Studies in Medical Anthropology

by Ellen E. Foley

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, 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anthropology

216 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2009

Reviews

[Katherine Holtby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ethnography on the politics of health in senegal for my global health class...real light read

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great for undergrad and beginning grad med anth students - finding a way to integrate into one of my classes. Accessible, well-written and flows well.