Book at Lunchtime: The Political Life of an Epidemic – Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe

TORCH Book at Lunchtime webinar on The Political Life of an
Epidemic – Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe written by
Professor Simukai Chigudu. About the book: Zimbabwe's catastrophic
cholera outbreak of 2008–9 saw an unprecedented number of people
affected, with 100,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths. Cholera,
however, was much more than a public health crisis: it represented
the nadir of the country's deepening political and economic crisis
of 2008. This study focuses on the political life of the cholera
epidemic, tracing the historical origins of the outbreak, examining
the social pattern of its unfolding and impact, analysing the
institutional and communal responses to the disease, and marking
the effects of its aftermath. Across different social and
institutional settings, competing interpretations and experiences
of the cholera epidemic created charged social and political
debates. In his examination of these debates which surrounded the
breakdown of Zimbabwe's public health infrastructure and failing
bureaucratic order, the scope and limitations of disaster relief,
and the country's profound levels of livelihood poverty and social
inequality, Simukai Chigudu reveals how this epidemic of a
preventable disease had profound implications for political
institutions and citizenship in Zimbabwe. Panel includes: Professor
Simukai Chigudu is an Associate Professor of African Politics at
Oxford and a Fellow of St Antony's College. Prior to academia, he
was a medical doctor in the National Health Service where he worked
for three years. He is principally interested in the social
politics of inequality in Africa, which he examines using disease,
public health, violence, and social suffering as organising
frameworks. He has conducted research in Zimbabwe, Uganda, The
Gambia, Tanzania and South Africa. Professor Sloan Mahone is an
Associate Professor of the History of Medicine at Oxford
University. She specialises in the history of psychiatry and
neurology in Africa as well as the history of medicine and
psychiatry globally. Her current research projects, funded by the
National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Oxford's James
Martin School, involve the implementation of oral history
programmes on epilepsy in Africa and in resource poor settings
globally. She is a member of Oxford's Epilepsy Research Group.
Professor Mahone has also worked extensively in historical research
and community development in Zaire (Democratic Republic of the
Congo), South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania, and
Zanzibar. Doctor Jon Schubert is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career
Fellow at Brunel University. He is a political and economic
anthropologist working on state institutions, infrastructures, and
transnational trade in Angola and Mozambique. He is the author of
Working the System: A Political Ethnography of the New Angola and
has previously held postdoctoral research positions at the
universities of Leipzig and Geneva.