IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jculte/v4y2011i1p27-43.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

'Since We Are Taking The Drugs':

Author

Listed:
  • Ari Samsky

Abstract

This paper examines and compares conceptions of the place of labor, commodity, value, and gift in two pharmaceutical company-sponsored international drug donation programs. Drawing on ethnographic research done between 2006 and 2008, the paper tracks how medical-scientific architects of these donation programs (NGO and pharmaceutical executives, tropical medicine experts, Ministries of Health) understand the labor of the drug recipients, how they imagine community participation, and how they value their own participation in the program. The paper incorporates interviews with past and present pharmaceutical company employees, elaborating their understandings of the relationships and values created by the donations, and their obligations within the programs. Scientist-administrators involved with the program envision community participation as being joyful and self-interested, and they show great excitement and pride in the power of their donated drugs. In contrast, interviews with farmers and local health volunteers drawn from a research trip to the Morogoro region of Tanzania show the ambivalent, conflicted, and sometimes resentful understanding of labor involved with the drug donation programs, labor which arrives in the form of distribution tasks and hygienic strictures associated with free, powerful drugs. The local scene provides a critical counterpoint to positive imaginations of community ownership and participation in health interventions, and points to systemic misunderstandings within the reciprocal relationship between African drug recipients and the American and European scientist-administrators who design and direct these programs.

Suggested Citation

  • Ari Samsky, 2011. "'Since We Are Taking The Drugs':," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 27-43, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:4:y:2011:i:1:p:27-43
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2011.535334
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2011.535334
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17530350.2011.535334?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peabody, John W., 1995. "An organizational analysis of the World Health Organization: Narrowing the gap between promise and performance," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 731-742, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Viola, Lora Anne, 2008. "WHO says competition is healthy: How civil society can change IGOs [Die WHO sagt: Wettbewerb ist gesund. Wie Zivilgesellschaft IGOs verändern kann]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance SP IV 2008-307, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    2. Mariano Rabassa & Emmanuel Skoufias & Hanan Jacoby, 2014. "Weather and Child Health in Rural Nigeria," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 23(4), pages 464-492.
    3. M. Ortuño & G. Tirado & B. Vitoriano, 2011. "A lexicographical goal programming based decision support system for logistics of Humanitarian Aid," TOP: An Official Journal of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research, Springer;Sociedad de Estadística e Investigación Operativa, vol. 19(2), pages 464-479, December.
    4. Hanrieder, Tine, 2014. "Local orders in international organisations: the World Health Organization's global programme on AIDS," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 106692, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Hanrieder, Tine, 2015. "The path-dependent design of international organizations: Federalism in the World Health Organization," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 215-239.
    6. Flessa, Steffen, 2003. "Priorities and allocation of health care resources in developing countries: A case-study from the Mtwara region, Tanzania," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 150(1), pages 67-80, October.
    7. Sonja Kahlmeier & Nino Künzli & Charlotte Braun-Fahrländer, 2002. "The first years of implementation of the Swiss National Environment and Health Action Plan (NEHAP): Lessons for environmental health promotion," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 47(2), pages 67-73, March.
    8. Gebremeskel Berhane Tesfay & Babatunde Abidoye, 2019. "Shocks in food availability and intra-household resources allocation: evidence on children nutrition outcomes in Ethiopia," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-21, December.
    9. Anaka Aiyar & Joseph Cummins, 2020. "An Age Profile Perspective on Two Puzzles in Global Child Health: the Indian Enigma and Economic Growth," Working Papers 202019, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    10. Joseph Cummins & Anaka Aiyar, 2017. "Age-Profile Estimates of the Relationship Between Economic Growth and Child Health," Working Papers 201710, University of California at Riverside, Department of Economics.
    11. Richard Freeman, 2012. "Reverb: Policy Making in Wave Form," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(1), pages 13-20, January.
    12. Bilal Avan & Syed Raza & Betty Kirkwood, 2014. "A community-based study of early childhood sensory stimulation in home environment associated with growth and psychomotor development in Pakistan," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 59(5), pages 779-788, October.
    13. Pauli Rintala & Viviene A. Temple & Meghann Lloyd & Chris Faro & John T. Foley, 2017. "Association of poverty and social exclusion with body mass index among Special Olympics athletes in Europe," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 62(8), pages 921-928, November.
    14. Vaughan, J. Patrick & Mogedal, Sigrun & Kruse, Stein-Erik & Lee, Kelley & Walt, Gill & de Wilde, Koen, 1996. "Financing the World Health Organisation: global importance of extrabudgetary funds," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 229-245, March.
    15. Andreea ŞERBAN & Stefan Razvan TATARU, 2018. "The Influence of General Data Protection Regulation on Patient Engagement," Logos Universalitate Mentalitate Educatie Noutate - Sectiunea Drept/ Logos Universality Mentality Education Novelty - Section: Law, Editura Lumen, Department of Economics, vol. 6(1), pages 56-72, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:4:y:2011:i:1:p:27-43. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJCE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.