Fierce Medicines, Fragile Socialities

Dominik Mattes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center “Affective Societies” and the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. His research interests include medical anthropology, critical global health, anthropology of religion, as well as anthropology of affect and emotion.

“Dominik Mattes’s stunning new book will remain relevant for those interested in why and how vertical global health interventions often fail (and how they might succeed). This book effectively illustrates how to translate the global to the local and the structural to the personal. Mattes also provides a blueprint for ethnographic research that aims to examine a problem from multiple, often contradictory, angles. Fierce Medicines, Fragile Socialities is a must read for those interested in HIV/AIDS, global health interventions, and ethnographic methods.” • Medical Anthropology Quarterly“This is an important contribution to existing research on HIV and its treatment in Africa. The book is unique in combining perspectives on providing, and on living, life with HIV treatment.  The observations are acute, and the case studies of patients and families are illuminating.” • Susan Reynolds Whyte, University of Copenhagen

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationList of AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Exploring ART in TangaChapter 2. Antiretroviral Treatment as a Global Mobile ForceChapter 3. Translating Global Technology into Local Health Care PracticeChapter 4. Generating Treatment Adherence: Neoliberal Patient Subjectivities, Biomedical Truth Claims, and Institutional MicropoliticsChapter 5. Diverging Trajectories of Reconstitution: Living with ARVs and the Pursuit of ‘Normalcy’Chapter 6. Cohesion and Conflict: Living a Social Live on ARVs within Kin-Based Networks of SolidarityChapter 7. HIV (Self-)Support Groups: Competition, Bureaucracy, and the Limitations of BiosocialityChapter 8. The Blood of Jesus, Witchcraft, and CD4 Counts: HIV/AIDS and ART in the Context of Traditional and Religious HealingConclusionReferencesIndex