Commentary: Reconfiguring hospitals as affective infrastructures

Amina Soulimani (Doctoral Research Fellow) writes a commentary on Bodies of Knowledge: Children and Childhoods in Health and Affliction edited by Efua Prah and Susan Levine published in 2021. The commentary follows the Anthropology Southern Africa Book Symposium held October 20th at the Bioscope in Johannesburg, organised by Professors Efua Prah (University of Johannesburg), Susan Levine (University of Cape Town) and Hameedah Parker (Anthropology Southern Africa Journal). 

Journal: Anthropology Southern Africa
Volume 47 Issue 4

Excerpt: 

"Bodies of Knowledge brings together a collection of ethnographic essays and rigorous work conducted in various locations in South Africa and Ghana around 2010. Collectively, the volume asks how “children imagine, interpret and make sense of mortality and being in the world”(2). At the intersection of affliction and an ethics of care are three hospital ethnographies that centre cancer and tuberculosis. The ethnographies take place in and out of a chest hospital and several paediatric oncology wards, yet their analyses expand beyond the hospital infrastructure to challenge Arthur Kleinman’s (1988)“illness narratives” and similar explanatory models. In popular terms, a “knowing body” is often attributed to those who reflect an epistemology that is foreign to ours, one that could be considered as superior or more advanced. Bodies of Knowledge uses the term in a different manner." Read the full publication