Document Detail


Entomology in translation: interpreting French medical entomological knowledge in colonial Mali.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  20055237     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
This essay examines how knowledge and practices around entomology and parasitology travelled and the consequences of their mobility. In exploring three anti-malaria campaigns in French Soudan before 1960, it argues that the history of medical entomology's travels entailed multiple temporal, spatial, social translations that African medical personnel, intellectuals, healers, and farmers in French Soudan reinterpreted, appropriated, and sometimes wholly rejected. This essay also focuses on "erroneous" translations, detailing how and why middle class medical personnel and intellectuals interpreted and reformulated farmers' and healers' diagnostic categories that may or may not be malaria. Anti-mosquito and antilarval interventions, and more generally anti-malaria interventions, influenced how African colonial subjects and health workers understood certain vectors and of certain maladies. These understandings, in turn, shaped the consequences of subsequent public health measures. Histories of translated parasitological and entomological knowledge and etiologies of illness have critical implications for contemporary malaria control efforts: interventions to reduce malaria transmission through various kinds of entomological controls that require active participation of local populations cannot be effective if all participants cannot agree upon what is being controlled or prevented.
Authors:
T Giles-Vernick
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Historical Article; Journal Article    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Parassitologia     Volume:  50     ISSN:  0048-2951     ISO Abbreviation:  Parassitologia     Publication Date:  2008 Dec 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2010-01-08     Completed Date:  2010-03-19     Revised Date:  -    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  0413724     Medline TA:  Parassitologia     Country:  Italy    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  281-90     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Unit? d'epid?miologie des maladies emergentes, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France. tamara.giles-vernick@pasteur.fr
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Animals
Colonialism / history*
Communication Barriers*
Culture
Entomology / history*
Female
France
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Health Promotion / history
History, 19th Century
History, 20th Century
Humans
Insect Vectors / parasitology
Language
Malaria / classification,  diagnosis,  epidemiology,  history*,  prevention & control,  transmission
Male
Mali
Medicine, African Traditional / history*
Mosquito Control
Parasitology / history*
Tropical Medicine / history*

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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