About
25
Publications
6,551
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
435
Citations
Introduction
Additional affiliations
September 2008 - present
Publications
Publications (25)
FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Over the last two decades, debates on ethics and reflections on the researcher's positionality and responsibility have been established firmly in general anthropology. These topics have received less attention in medical anthropology, however, despite the close relationship of the sub-discipline with physical and mental healt...
It was in early March 2011 that Tanzanian newspapers first featured reports on a herbal “miracle cure” for HIV/AIDS and other major chronic diseases dispensed by a man referred to as “Babu wa Loliondo” (Grandfather from Loliondo). Hundreds of thousands of people have since flocked to receive the ‘magic cup’ from the retired Lutheran pastor who clai...
The experiences and practices of antiretroviral drug consumers in Tanzania are shaped by economic scarcity, limited state-provided social welfare, and fragile kinship-based solidarity. Embedding antiretroviral therapy (ART) in patients' 'local moral worlds' brings further existential dimensions to the fore that articulate closely with the priority...
This article investigates the implementation of antiretroviral therapy (ART) in urban Tanga, Tanzania. First, the enrollment procedures of the national treatment program and medical professionals' techniques to produce adherent patients are examined. Second, exemplary case studies of patients and their families are explored to depict varying respon...
Imagine a divided mountain-scape. A line of ceasefire. Fog. Imagine coming to a clearing. In a mist-covered, militarized order of here and t/here, affection makes way where vision or bodies cannot. Mothers call out to daughters; sons identify their mothers’ voices in two-way traffics of sound. So long as the vocal exchange lasts, somewhere along th...
In this introduction, we propose the notion of ‘embodied belonging’ as a fruitful analytical heuristic for scholars in medical and psychological anthropology. We envision this notion to help us gain a more nuanced understanding of the entanglements of the political, social, and affective dimensions of belonging and their effects on health, illness,...
Drawing on ethnographic research in a Nigerian-based Pentecostal church in Berlin, this article explores the discussions that emerged when my scholarly representations of the congregants’ aesthetic engagements with the Elsewhere diverged from the church leadership’s expectations. More specifically, it interrogates my representational practice in re...
In this introductory article to the Special Section, we intend to literally bring sociality to (bodily) life and ask what medical anthropology might gain by using the lens of sociality for a better understanding of the phenomena it is concerned with. Conversely, we probe how the field of health and illness-including themes concerning embodiment, vu...
This article, a reflection on collaborative fieldwork involving a Sufi Muslim and a Pentecostal Christian setting in Berlin, examines whether distinct and diverse religious groups can be brought into a meaningful relation with one another. It considers the methodological possibilities that might become possible or foreclose when two researchers, wo...
Coping with “failure” before, during, and after doing fieldwork brings forth some of the silenced and less jubilant moments in research. Experiences and feelings of failure may come in varied disguises. They may relate to the methods used, the relationships established, the ethical challenges faced, or the way the physicality of doing research is d...
Set in Tanga, a city on the Tanzanian Swahili coast, Dominik Mattes examines the implementation of antiretroviral HIV-treatment (ART) in the area, exploring the manifold infrastructural and social fragilities of treatment provision in public HIV clinics as well as patients’ multi-layered struggles of coming to terms with ART in their everyday lives...
This chapter highlights the importance of using the researcher's own bodily perceptions or her/his ways of dis/sensing the field as a crucial means for understanding and representing religious gatherings' affective atmospheres. It draws on comparative research in a neo-Pentecostal church and a Sufi prayer circle in Berlin and explores the more-than...
Proceeding from discussions within a multidisciplinary working group, this text outlines key dimensions and identifies affective registers with regard to the notion of belonging. Further, it presents case studies from two research projects: an ethnographic account of a Vietnamese migrant community in Berlin and a literary-studies analysis of writin...
This article discusses the potential of fieldworkers’ affects as epistemic processes. It showcases lessons from long-term fieldwork in diverse geographical locations (Indonesia, Germany, and Tanzania) and insights from our affective inquiries into coming of age on the streets, Sufism, and antiretroviral HIV-therapy. Inspired by ethnographic writing...
This chapter builds on anthropological studies that examine the role of religious practice in the construction of belonging within the context of migration. We expand on such studies by focusing on how religiously and spatially mediated modes of being in and relating to the world become embodied in the life worlds of the members of two diasporic re...
The interdisciplinary, politically contested field of Global Health has often
been described as a consequence of, and response to, an intensification of
the mobilities of, and connectivities between, people, pathogens, ideas,
and infrastructure across national borders and large distances. However,
such global mobilities and connectivities are not a...
Introduction to the thematic thread "Medical Technologies and Infrastructure: Exploring Im/Mobility and Dis/Connectivity in 'Global Health'" that was co-published by Allegra Lab: Anthropology, Art, World, Law and the Collaborative Blog Medizinethnologie: Body, Health and Healing in an Interconnected World. Throughout the week of Jan 23-27, 2017, th...
The experiences and practices of antiretroviral drug consumers in Tanzania are shaped by economic scarcity, limited state-provided social welfare, and fragile kinship-based solidarity. Embedding antiretroviral therapy (ART) in patients' 'local moral worlds' brings further existential dimensions to the fore that articulate closely with the priority...
http://www.medizinethnologie.net/ein-jahr-blog/
The experiences and practices of antiretroviral drug consumers in Tanzania are shaped by economic scarcity, limited state-provided social welfare, and fragile kinship-based solidarity. Embedding antiretroviral therapy (ART) in patients' 'local moral worlds' brings further existential dimensions to the fore that articulate closely with the priority...
According to global health discourses, antiretroviral treatment enables ever more people living with HIV to resume a 'normal' life: a return to health and the reconstruction of social relations. Based on 15 months of fieldwork in Tanga, Tanzania, I explore the extent to which patients 'on the ground' have experienced the shift of HIV from an acute...
Die Medizinethnologie ist in Deutschland eine relativ junge Subdisziplin der Eth-nologie bzw. Sozial-und Kulturanthropologie. Gleichwohl erfreut sie sich steigen-der Nachfrage nicht nur bei Studierenden und ForscherInnen der Sozialwissen-schaften und der Medizin, sondern auch im weiteren gesellschaftlichen Umfeld. Im Rahmen der Entwicklungszusammen...