Clare Chandler: 'Development with Antibiotics: case studies from Uganda'

Presented by Clare Chandler on behalf of Christine Nabirye, Miriam Kayendeke, Sarah Staedke, Paula Palanco Lopez, Laurie Denyer Willis & Susan Nayiga

This presentation explores ways in which antibiotics have come to organise societies, with case studies from Uganda. The prospect of a future in which antibiotics fail to cure everyday illnesses has highlighted the significance of these substances in the ways that people live today. Antibiotics are often described as a cornerstone of modern medicine. Here we join others in observing the relations of antibiotics to modernity more broadly. Drawing from ethnographic case studies in Uganda - in archives, rural homesteads, peri-urban farms and urban informal settlements - this presentation illustrates how antibiotics propel a development agenda premised on citizen responsibility and entrepreneurship.

Clare Chandler is a Professor in Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Over the past 20 years, her research has focused on the domains, devices and infrastructures of health care in the era of global health, in particular in east and southern Africa. Clare led the ESRC-funded Antimicrobials in Society (AMIS) programme which aimed to bring fresh perspectives from the social sciences to the problem of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Co-authors of this presentation, all co-investigators and collaborators on the AMIS programme in Uganda, each led aspects of the case studies that inform this collective analysis.

Image: A drug shop in Kampala, Uganda. Credit: Magdalena Bondos

This is a SHS Health, Mind and Society event.

The Health, Mind and Society initiative grows from work being carried out in the Faculty of Social and Historical Studies addressing the social, historical and cultural aspects of health. It draws on longstanding work within UCL’s Department of Anthropology which brings together social and biological understandings of health, as well as research in Geography, History, Economics, Politics, Sociology, the Institute of Advanced Studies, Archaeology and History of Art. Many of us also work in collaboration with colleagues in the medical sciences, in the Institute of Global Health, and Science and Technology Studies.

Social scientists in UCL have for some time carried out important work on health inequalities and their reproduction over generations, drawing on biosocial anthropology and lifecourse approaches. Our work addresses urgent social issues around mental health, race and racism in health, on environmental impacts on health and on social and ethical questions related to new technologies of health – from reproductive technologies to mobile applications. We also recognise the importance of the historical and cultural dimensions of health – from artistic depictions of the human body over time, to the long history and reach of Chinese medicine.