Anita Hannig – författare

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backwards culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery, medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight.As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling "culture" the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical care in rural Africa.Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

Over the past few decades, maternal childbirth injuries have become a potent symbol of Western biomedical intervention in Africa, affecting over one million women across the global south. Western-funded hospitals have sprung up, offering surgical sutures that ostensibly allow women who suffer from obstetric fistula to return to their communities in full health. Journalists, NGO staff, celebrities, and some physicians have crafted a stock narrative around this injury, depicting afflicted women as victims of a backwards culture who have their fortunes dramatically reversed by Western aid. With Beyond Surgery, medical anthropologist Anita Hannig unsettles this picture for the first time and reveals the complicated truth behind the idea of biomedical intervention as quick-fix salvation. Through her in-depth ethnography of two repair and rehabilitation centers operating in Ethiopia, Hannig takes the reader deep into a world inside hospital walls, where women recount stories of loss and belonging, shame and delight.As she chronicles the lived experiences of fistula patients in clinical treatment, Hannig explores the danger of labeling "culture" the culprit, showing how this common argument ignores the larger problem of insufficient medical care in rural Africa.Beyond Surgery portrays the complex social outcomes of surgery in an effort to deepen our understanding of medical missions in Africa, expose cultural biases, and clear the path toward more effective ways of delivering care to those who need it most.

An intimate investigation of assisted dying in America and what it means to determine the end of our lives.In this groundbreaking book, award-winning cultural anthropologist Anita Hannig brings us into the lives of ordinary Americans going to extraordinary lengths to set the terms of their own deaths. Faced with a terminal diagnosis and unbearable suffering, they decide to seek medical assistance in dying-a legal option now available to one in five Americans.Drawing on five years of research on the frontlines of assisted dying, Hannig unearths the uniquely personal narratives masked by a polarized national debate. Among them are Ken, an irreverent ninety-year-old blues musician who invites his family to his death, dons his best clothes, and goes out singing; Derianna, a retired nurse and midwife who treks through Oregon and Washington to guide dying patients across life's threshold; and Bruce, a scrappy activist with Parkinson's who fights to expand access to the law, not knowing he would soon, in an unexpected twist of fate, become eligible himself.Lyrical and lucid, sensitive but never sentimental, The Day I Die tackles one of the most urgent social issues of our time: how to restore dignity and meaning to the dying process in the age of high-tech medicine. Meticulously researched and compassionately rendered, the book exposes the tight legal restrictions, frustrating barriers to access, and corrosive cultural stigma that can undermine someone's quest for an assisted death-and why they persist in achieving the departure they desire.The Day I Die will transform the way we think about agency and closure in the face of death. Its colorful characters remind us what we all stand to gain when we confront the hard-and yet ultimately liberating-truth of our mortality.

Making friends with death is the ultimate liberationContemplating death is scary. Most of us prefer not to dwell on the fact that our time here is limited—it’s more comforting to imagine we’ll all live forever. And yet, death is an integral part of life. Rather than shield you from your mortality, this guided journal gives you the space and tools to explore your own relationship with it. My Death Diary takes you gently by the hand and guides you down a path toward examining your own mortality.Doing this work isn’t easy; it requires a great deal of courage and commitment. But it is so worth it. Because nothing brings you more immediately into the present than the realization that life is finite.So what if you used this time—right now—to no longer simply ignore or fear death but to equip yourself for it?My Death Diary will help you embrace the idea that, eventually, this all will end—so you can prioritize what truly matters.