Religion, Medicine, and Global Health in Uganda

Reflecting Critically on an Afternoon at Mulago Hospital

Authors

  • Jason Bruner Arizona State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.34199

Keywords:

global health, healing, medicine, religion, Uganda

Abstract

In this article, I use three scenes from an afternoon of ethnographic fieldwork at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda as the occasion to consider the various ways in which religion, medicine and global health are imagined, reified and dissolved as contemporary categories. I use historical and contemporary literature to illuminate how these interactions are contextualized products of broader historical processes. I conclude by arguing that research on global health needs to take “religion” seriously as a venue in which people create and enact modes of life that they find meaningful and life sustaining, particularly those creations and practices that are unable to be quantified in global health metrics and research.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Jason Bruner, Arizona State University

    Jason Bruner is an assistant professor of global Christianity in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He is the author of Living Salvation in the East African Revival in Uganda (University of Rochester Press, 2017). Funding from the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, as well as the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University, contributed to this research.

References

Adams, Vincanne (ed.) 2016 Metrics: What Counts in Global Health. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi. org/10.1215/9780822374480

Administrator 2009 Sodomy Books Invade Schools. The Observer, June 8. Online: http://www.observer. ug/news-headlines/3692-sodomy-books-invade-schools (accessed March 10, 2016).

Anderson, Allan 2007 Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism. Maryknoll: Orbis Books.

Anidjar, Gil 2015 Christianity, Christianities, and Christian. Journal of Religious and Political Practice 1(1): 39–46.

Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 2009 Bills Supplement No. 13, September 25. Online: http://www.publiceye.org/ publications/globalizing-the-culture-wars/pdf/uganda-bill-september-09.pdf (accessed March 10, 2016).

Barrett, David B. 1970 Schism and Renewal: An Analysis of Six Thousand Contemporary Religious Movements. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

Betsimbire, Yeremiah 1971 East African Revival Interviews, folder 3. Bishop Tucker School of Theology Library Archives, Uganda Christian University.

Birungi, Harriet 1999 “Where do they go when they go out?”: The Impact of User Fees on Women’s Health Seeking Behaviour in Karamoja. MA thesis, Copenhagen University.

Bowmann, Rebecca Pierce 2011 The Salve of Divine Healing: Essential Rituals for Survival among Working-Class Pentecostals in Bogotá, Colombia. In Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing, edited by Candy Gunther Brown, 187–206. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393408.003.0010

Boyd, Lydia 2015 Preaching Prevention: Born-Again Christianity and the Moral Politics of AIDS in Uganda. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Brown, Candy Gunther (ed.) 2011 Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195393408.001.0001

Bruner, Jason 2017 This Place is an Altar. Image Journal, April 25. Online: https://www.imagejournal. org/2017/04/25/this-place-is-an-altar/ (accessed July 9, 2017).

Chidester, David 2013 Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Christensen, Rene Flamsholt 1990 “A Strategy for the Improvement of Prescribing and Drug Use in Rural Health Facilities in Uganda. A Report of an Assignment Carried out under the Auspices of the Uganda Essential Drugs Management Programme, 2 September–11 October 1990.” White paper held at Makerere Institute for Social Research.

Cochrane, James R. 2006 Religion, Public Health and a Church for the 21st Century. International Review of Mission 95(376/377): 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6631.2006.tb00538.x

----- 2014 Thinking about Complexity: Transdisciplinarity and Research on Religion and Health in Africa. Religion & Theology 21: 334–57. https://doi.org/10.1163/15743012- 02103006

Coleman, Simon, and Rosalind I. J. Hackett 2015 Introduction: A New Field? In The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism, edited by Simon Coleman and Rosalind I. J. Hackett, 1–40. New York: NYU Press.

Comaroff, Jean, and John Comaroff 1991 Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1. Chicago: Chicago University Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226114477.001.0001

Daneel, M. L. 1970 Zionism and Faith-Healing in Rhodesia: Aspects of African Independent Churches. Leiden: Afrika-Studiecentrum.

Fadiman, Anne 1997 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.

Fagan, Donna M., Alice Kiger, and Edwin van Teijlingen 2010 A Survey of Faith Leaders Concerning Health Promotion and the Level of Health Living Activities Occurring in Faith Communities in Scotland. Global Health Promotion 17(4): 15–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1757975910383927

Farmer, Paul, Jim Yong Kim, Arthur Kleinman, and Matthew Basilico 2013 Reimagining Global Health: An Introduction. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Feierman, Steven, and John M. Janzen (eds) 1992 The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Flint, Karen E. 2008 Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820–1948. Athens: Ohio University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.7003

Geissler, P. Wenzel 2011 Studying Trial Communities: Anthropological and Historical Inquiries into Ethos, Politics and Economy of Medical Research in Africa. In Evidence, Ethos and Experiment: The Anthropology and History of Medical Research in Africa, edited by P. Wenzel Geissler and Catharine Molyneux, 1–28. New York: Berghahn Books.

Giles-Vernick, Tamara, and James L. A. Webb, Jr 2013 Introduction. In Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease Control, edited by T. Giles-Vernick and J. L. A. Webb, Jr, 1–24. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Gordon, David M. 2012 Invisible Agents: Spirits in a Central African History. Athens: Ohio University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.19581

Graboyes, Melissa 2015 The Experiment Must Continue: Medical Research and Ethics in East Africa, 1940–2014. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Groom, Amy, and Kerren Hedlund 1996 Promoting Appropriate Drug Use in Missionary Facilities in Cameroon. Action Programme on Essential Drugs, World Health Organization.

Hunt, Nancy Rose 2015 A Nervous State: Violence, Remedies, and Reverie in Colonial Congo. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822375241

Jackson, Michael 2011 Life within Limits. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 9780822393696

Janzen, John 1987 Therapy Management: Concept, Reality, Practice. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 1(1): 68–84. https://doi.org/10.1525/maq.1987.1.1.02a00040

Jenkins, Philip 2002 The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0195146166.001.0001

Jennings, Michael 2008 Healing Bodies, Salvation of Souls: Missionary Medicine in Colonial Tanganyika, 1870s–1939. Journal of Religion in Africa 38(1): 27–56. https://doi.org/10.1163/ 157006608X262700

Jones, Ben 2013 The Making of Meaning: Churches, Development Projects and Violence in Eastern Uganda. Journal of Religion in Africa 43(1): 74–95.

Joseph, Owor 1996 Collaborative Project on Community Drug Use, Tororo District Report. White Paper at Makerere Institute for Social Research.

Kabarebe, Joshua 1971 East African Revival Interviews, folder 2, September 29. Bishop Tucker School of Theology Library Archives, Uganda Christian University.

Kafuko, Jessica M., Christine Zirabamuzaale, and Danstan Bagend 1996 Rational Drug Use in Rural Health Units of Uganda: Effect of National Standard Treatment Guidelines on Rational Drug Use. Kisubi: Marianam Press.

Kalofonos, Ippolytos 2014 “All they do is pray”: Community Labour and the Narrowing of “Care” during Mozambique’s HIV Scale-up. Global Public Health: An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice 9(1–2): 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2014.881527

Kalu, Ogbu 2007 African Christianity: An African Story. Trenton: Africa World Press.

Kassimir, Ronald 1996 The Social Power of Religious Organization: The Catholic Church in Uganda, 1955–1991. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.

Keane, Webb 2007 Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Kodesh, Neil 2010 Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Public Healing in Buganda. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.

Landau, Paul 1996 Explaining Surgical Evangelism in Colonial Southern Africa: Teeth, Pain and Faith. Journal of African History 37(2): 261–81. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0021853700035222

Linstrum, Erik 2016 Ruling Minds: Psychology in the British Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674089150

Livingstone, Julie 2012 Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822395768

Lyons, Maryinez 1994 The Power to Heal: African Auxiliaries in Colonial Belgian Congo and Uganda. In Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India, edited by Dagmar Engels and Shula Marks, 202–226. London: British Academic Press.

Manglos, Nicolette D., and Jenny Trinitapoli 2011 The Third Therapeutic System: Faith Healing Strategies in the Context of a Generalized AIDS Epidemic. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 52(1): 107–122. https:// doi.org/10.1177/0022146510395025

Masuzawa, Tomoko 2005 The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/ chicago/9780226922621.001.0001

McPake, Barbara, Delius Assimwe, Francis Mwesigye, Matthius Ofumbi, Peter Streefland, and Asaph Turinde 1998 The Economic Behaviour of Health Workers in Uganda: Implications for Quality and Accessibility of Public Health Services. London: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Meinert, Lotte 2009 Hopes in Friction: Schooling, Health, and Everyday Life in Uganda. Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.

Morgan, Rosemary, Andrew Green, and Jelke Boesten 2014 Aligning Faith-Based and National HIV/AIDS Prevention Responses? Factors Influencing the HIV/AIDS Prevention Policy Process and Response of FaithBased NGOs in Tanzania. Health Policy and Planning 29(3): 313–22. https://doi. org/10.1093/heapol/czt018

Myiyi, Susan 2009 UNICEF Book Supports Teen Homosexuality. New Vision. Online: http://www. newvision.co.ug/new_vision/news/1246514/unicef-book-supports-teen-homosexuality (accessed March 5, 2016).

Nalwanga-Sebina, Abby J. 1992 “Women and AIDS in Uganda: Prepared for UNICEF Situation Analysis for 1995– 2000.” White paper, Makerere Institute for Social Research library.

Ogot, B. A., and F. B. Welbourn 1966 A Place to Feel at Home: A Study of Two Independent Churches in Western Kenya. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.

Okoth, Oketcho 1994 Public Health Manpower Needs. Medical Bulletin of Uganda 1(2) (January–April): 21–24.

Orach, Sam Orochi n.d. Is Religion Relevant in Health Care in Africa in the 21st Century?—The Uganda Experience. Online: https://s3.amazonaws.com/berkley-center/09ARHAPReligio nRelevantAfrica.pdf (accessed June 10, 2017).

Patterson, Donna A. 2015 Pharmacy in Senegal: Gender, Healing, and Entrepreneurship. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

PEPFAR 2016 Partnering to Achieve Epidemic Control in Uganda. Online: http://www.pepfar. gov/countries/uganda/index.htm (accessed July 9, 2017).

Pew Research Forum 2010 Christianity and Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa. Online: http://www.pewresearch. org/daily-number/christianity-and-islam-in-sub-saharan-africa/ (accessed July 9, 2017).

Prince, Ruth J., and Rebecca Marsland (eds) 2014 Making and Unmaking Public Health in Africa: Ethnographic and Historical Perspectives. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Ramírez-Johnson, Johnny, John Park, Colwick Wilson, Sharon Pittman, and Héctor Luis Díaz 2014 “Deeply Woven Roots”: Health Initiatives and Community Social Services of FaithBased Organizations of the Hidalgo County, Texas. Journal of Religion and Health 53(4): 1199–1213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9807-x

Ranger, T. O. 1981 Godly Medicine: The Ambiguities of Medical Missions in Southeast Tanzania, 1900–1945. Social Science and Medicine 15(3): 261–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-7987(81)90052-1

Report of a visit paid to the Bahima settled area of the Diocese of West Buganda n.d., ca. June 1962 Makerere University Library Archives. AR/CMS/86/1: Medical activity general medical affairs, correspondence, 1936–1971.

Skjortnes, Marianne 2014 Restoring Dignity in Rural and Urban Madagascar: On How Religion Creates New Life-stories. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-1-4539-1220-1

Steglitz, Jeremy, Reuben Ng, John S. Mosha, and Trace Kershaw 2012 Divinity and Distress: The Impact of Religion and Spirituality on the Mental Health of HIV-Positive Adults in Tanzania. AIDS and Behavior 16(8): 2392–2398. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-012-0261-7

Street, Alice 2014 Biomedicine in an Unstable Place: Infrastructure and Personhood in a Papua New Guinean Hospital. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822376668

Twaddle, Michael 1968–69 The Religion of Malaki Revisited. In Published Proceedings of University of East Africa Social Sciences Council Conference, 1968/69: History Papers, 249–62. Kampala: Makerere Institute of Social Research.

----- 1993 Kakungulu and the Creation of Uganda, 1868–1928. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Van Staa, Anne Loes, and Anita Hardon 1996 “Injection Practices in the Developing World: A Comparative Review of Field Studies in Uganda and Indonesia.” Action Programme on Essential Drugs, World Health Organization.

Vasquez, Manuel A. 2011 More than Belief: A Materialist Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Vaughan, Megan 1991 Curing their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Vision Reporter 2009 Homosexual Admits Recruiting Students. New Vision. http://www.newvision.co. ug/new_vision/news/1247426/homosexual-admits-recruiting-students (accessed May 15, 2017).

Webb, Jr, James L. A. 2013 The First Large-Scale Use of Synthetic Insecticide for Malaria Control in Tropical Africa. In Global Health in Africa: Historical Perspectives on Disease Control, edited by T. Giles-Vernick and J. L. A. Webb, Jr, 42–69. Athens: Ohio University Press.

Weisheit, Anke 2003 Traditional Medicine Practice in Contemporary Uganda. IK Notes 54: 1–4.

Welbourn, F. B. 1961 East African Rebels: A Study of Some Independent Churches. London: SCM Press.

Wendland, Claire L. 2010 A Heart for the Work: Journeys through an African Medical School. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226893280.001.0001

White, Luise 2000 Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Whyte, Susan Reynolds 1997 Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

----- 2014 Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda. Durham: Duke University Press. https:// doi.org/10.1215/9780822375975

Published

2017-09-26

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Bruner, J. (2017). Religion, Medicine, and Global Health in Uganda: Reflecting Critically on an Afternoon at Mulago Hospital. Fieldwork in Religion, 12(1), 27-49. https://doi.org/10.1558/firn.34199