Health and society in Windhoek, Namibia

Abstract

Abstract by author:

The nature of health care and sanitary 'reform' were always contested. This thesis argues for the importance of understanding not only the conditions in which Africans, openly or tacitly, opposed colonial medical practices, but also the changing traditions of indigenous health care in Namibia. It analyses these using oral evidence and concludes that such healing practices remained vibrant and helped to shape African identities at this period

The thesis emphasises in particular the ambiguities of biomedicine, which drew its power not only from colonial authority, but also from its ability, albeit limited, to offer effective treatment. It also argues for the importance of analysing silences as well as stereotypes in medical discourses

In Namibia, as in other colonial situations, biomedical knowledge functioned as a source of power for the authorities, whose primary objective was to protect white health. Sanitary measures directed at Africans were a potent means of repression, and (increasingly gendered) ideologies associated with biomedicine underpinned processes of stereotyping the black population. Missionary nurses in Windhoek, too, based much of their thinking on the perceived metaphorical associations of blackness, disease and 'immorality'. To a limited extent, however, and largely unsuccessfully, the authorities also attempted to use biomedical provision to gain ideological influence