When places come first: suffering, archetypal space and the problematic production of global health. Issue 4 (18th June 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Herrick, Clare
• Is Part Of: Transactions. Volume 42:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 530
• Page End: 543
• Publication Date: 2017-06-18
• Subjects: global health -- anthropology -- suffering -- non‐communicable disease -- health geography -- subjectivity; Geography -- Periodicals; 910.6041
• DOI: 10.1111/tran.12186
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0020-2754

Abstract

Abstract : The rise of global health as a field of study and site of intervention has animated significant critical social science engagements. Of these, medical anthropology has arguably emerged as the ascendant in the field with its growing corpus of writing and advocacy largely animated by the discipline's 'suffering slot'. This paper thus applies a geographical critique to anthropology's moral, humanitarian impulse to give voice to suffering by exploring the spatial consequences of this mode of scholarship. It argues that the suffering slot inevitably leads global health researchers to certain archetypal spaces and that, in turn, these places: (i) are overwhelmingly biomedical; (ii) come to function as 'truth spots' in the production and circulation of global health knowledge and (iii) perpetuate a global health riddled with 'ignorance spots'. Given this, the paper asks what happens if we look beyond suffering to consider the hidden geographies of global health that might then be revealed. It argues that in order to develop a richer topography of global health knowledge and critique, we must also consider those spaces where pleasure and suffering intersect in ways that challenge the humanitarian impulse and crisis‐led readings of health. These other archetypal spaces of global health – gyms, bars, supermarkets and more – are not flippant distractions from the grave reality of human suffering, but rather spaces that condition the genesis of suffering and where affliction is put aside in favour of pleasure. In arguing that we need to be far more attuned to the non‐medical spaces where global health is produced, experienced and challenged, the paper also articulates how geography might productively meet anthropology in critical studies of global health.