The Enculturated Gene: Sickle Cell Health Politics and Biological Difference in West Africa

"Duana Fullwiley has produced a richly textured ethnography of what it means to study the way medical science approaches a disease across broad cultural landscapes. In so doing, she has built a bridge across C. P. Snow's 'two cultures.'"--Troy Duster, author of Backdoor to Eugenics"In this meticulously crafted ethnography, Fullwiley exposes the tragic human consequences of a belief in a 'mild form' of sickle cell anemia thought to affect Senegalese. International donors, scientists, and local peoples alike adhere to this belief, fueled by cultural strategies of coping in an environment of shocking medical lack. This first book-length ethnography about genetic disease in Africa, a must-read for social scientists and health care professionals, demonstrates irrevocably how tangled power relations and biogenetic difference inform embodiment and subjectivity."--Margaret Lock, coauthor of An Anthropology of Biomedicine"An important contribution to the social studies of science and critical medical anthropology, The Enculturated Gene offers an insightful perspective on and a sensitive understanding of the experiences and dilemmas of patients, doctors, and scientists dealing with sickle cell anemia in West Africa."--Didier Fassin, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton"Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, The Enculturated Gene admirably demonstrates how sickle cell disease forms new associations in and between the domains of biomedicine, biopolitics, and the everyday lives of sufferers. Fullwiley demonstrates that universalistic, biomedical concepts of disease have only limited value in understanding embodied, situated disease."--Stefan Beck, Humboldt University of Berlin