Abigail Adams
Associate Professor
What's a book you would recommend to someone who wanted to learn more about your area of expertise?
My favorite book and one that makes global health and medical anthropology accessible is Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History. It was written by the medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer. It is a beautifully written book that frames the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 as a product of the corrosive nature of colonialism. I teach this book in my Medical Anthropology 444 course.
Farmer explains how diseases, like Ebola, are not just random pathogens that happen to kill people, but they are the product of decades of neglect and inequality. Farmer is steadfast in his pursuit of health as a human right, and he challenges us to act with compassion and justice to our fellow humans.
This book turned out to be Farmer’s magnum opus, as he died suddenly last year in Rwanda while working at one of the many clinics that he and his collaborators opened across the globe through the organization Partners in Health.
Abigail Adams is a cultural anthropologist specializing in political conflict and human rights and medical anthropology.
Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History
Paul Farmer
Picador, 2021
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