What might we learn from ANT for studying healthcare issues in the majority world, and what might ANT learn in turn?

Abstract

Abstract

en In this contribution, I think through how ANT and related feminist science studies’ sensibilities can help us think differently about healthcare issues in the majority world. The piece discusses the implications of the methodological impulse of ANT not to divide the realms that make up the complex knots of realities. I analyse the development of the malaria vaccine MOSQUIRIX, and in this weave together questions of (i) how the vaccine relates to global and local infrastructures of healthcare provision, (ii) how it might help us to think about technological fixes and (iii) how parasites are stubborn actants in themselves whose biological complexity and changeability temper with the hopes of vaccine developers. The contribution argues that it is crucial for ANT-inspired analyses to ask what kinds of practices of caring for bodies, patients and environments fall off the agendas of philanthropists, pharmaceutical industry and global health policies? It is here, where the study of health in the majority world can inspire STS, namely in bringing the effects that situations of (often prolonged) economic, environmental and social vulnerabilities and insecurities have on bodies (human and parasite alike), minds, infrastructures, our living environments and landscapes more broadly to the fore.