Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

The Enculturated Gene : Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa / Duana Fullwiley.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2012Edition: Course BookDescription: 1 online resource (368 p.) : 7 halftones. 1 line illus. 4 mapsContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780691123172
  • 9781400840410
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 362.1961527009663 23
LOC classification:
  • RA645.S53 F85 2017
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter one. Introduction: The Powers of Association -- Chapter two. Healthy Sicklers with "Mild" Disease: Local Illness Affects and Population- Level Effects -- Chapter three. The Biosocial Politics of Plants and People -- Chapter four. Attitudes of Care -- Chapter five. Localized Biologies: Mapping Race and Sickle Cell Difference in French West Africa -- Chapter six. Ordering Illness: Heterozygous "Trait" Suffering in the Land of the Mild Disease -- Chapter seven. The Work of Patient Advocacy -- Conclusion. Economic and Health Futures amid Hope and Despair -- Notes -- References -- Index
Summary: In the 1980s, a research team led by Parisian scientists identified several unique DNA sequences, or haplotypes, linked to sickle cell anemia in African populations. After casual observations of how patients managed this painful blood disorder, the researchers in question postulated that the Senegalese type was less severe. The Enculturated Gene traces how this genetic discourse has blotted from view the roles that Senegalese patients and doctors have played in making sickle cell "mild" in a social setting where public health priorities and economic austerity programs have forced people to improvise informal strategies of care. Duana Fullwiley shows how geneticists, who were fixated on population differences, never investigated the various modalities of self-care that people developed in this context of biomedical scarcity, and how local doctors, confronted with dire cuts in Senegal's health sector, wittingly accepted the genetic prognosis of better-than-expected health outcomes. Unlike most genetic determinisms that highlight the absoluteness of disease, DNA haplotypes for sickle cell in Senegal did the opposite. As Fullwiley demonstrates, they allowed the condition to remain officially invisible, never to materialize as a health priority. At the same time, scientists' attribution of a less severe form of Senegalese sickle cell to isolated DNA sequences closed off other explanations of this population's measured biological success. The Enculturated Gene reveals how the notion of an advantageous form of sickle cell in this part of West Africa has defined--and obscured--the nature of this illness in Senegal today.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781400840410

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter one. Introduction: The Powers of Association -- Chapter two. Healthy Sicklers with "Mild" Disease: Local Illness Affects and Population- Level Effects -- Chapter three. The Biosocial Politics of Plants and People -- Chapter four. Attitudes of Care -- Chapter five. Localized Biologies: Mapping Race and Sickle Cell Difference in French West Africa -- Chapter six. Ordering Illness: Heterozygous "Trait" Suffering in the Land of the Mild Disease -- Chapter seven. The Work of Patient Advocacy -- Conclusion. Economic and Health Futures amid Hope and Despair -- Notes -- References -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In the 1980s, a research team led by Parisian scientists identified several unique DNA sequences, or haplotypes, linked to sickle cell anemia in African populations. After casual observations of how patients managed this painful blood disorder, the researchers in question postulated that the Senegalese type was less severe. The Enculturated Gene traces how this genetic discourse has blotted from view the roles that Senegalese patients and doctors have played in making sickle cell "mild" in a social setting where public health priorities and economic austerity programs have forced people to improvise informal strategies of care. Duana Fullwiley shows how geneticists, who were fixated on population differences, never investigated the various modalities of self-care that people developed in this context of biomedical scarcity, and how local doctors, confronted with dire cuts in Senegal's health sector, wittingly accepted the genetic prognosis of better-than-expected health outcomes. Unlike most genetic determinisms that highlight the absoluteness of disease, DNA haplotypes for sickle cell in Senegal did the opposite. As Fullwiley demonstrates, they allowed the condition to remain officially invisible, never to materialize as a health priority. At the same time, scientists' attribution of a less severe form of Senegalese sickle cell to isolated DNA sequences closed off other explanations of this population's measured biological success. The Enculturated Gene reveals how the notion of an advantageous form of sickle cell in this part of West Africa has defined--and obscured--the nature of this illness in Senegal today.Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)