ArticleMedical anthropology quarterly2023
The politics of irrationality.
Article in Medical anthropology quarterly, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Antibiotic use in Türkiye: Everyday encounters of translating policy and negotiating rationality.Medical anthropology quarterly · 2026Article
- The social burden of antimicrobial resistance: what is it, how can we measure it, and why does it matter?JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2025Review
- Managing low-back pain in rural Uganda: a qualitative study exploring the perspectives and practices of frontline health workers regarding LBP management in primary care.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2025Article
- Modelling Interventions to Combat Antibacterial Resistance in East Africa Using Causal Bayesian Networks.Research square · 2025Article
- Does One Health need an ontological turn?Critical public health · 2025Article
- "Arming half-baked people with weapons!" Information enclaving among professionals and the need for a care-centred model for antibiotic use information in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi.Global health action · 2024Article
- Quality, availability and suitability of antimicrobial stewardship guidance: a multinational qualitative study.JAC-antimicrobial resistance · 2024Article
- The politics of irrationality.Medical anthropology quarterly · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In siloed discussions of antimicrobial resistance, antibiotic use on farms in the Global South has emerged as a key site for intervention. The antibiotic consumption targeted is not all consumption, but "irrational" consumption. This concept of irrationality is neither new, nor true, but rather is a long-standing form of maintenance work within global health systems. Via an attention to chickens and the antibiotics farmers use to raise them in the suburbs of Kampala, we suggest that claims of irrationality are a central part of constituting what Tania Li has called the 'deficient subject'. In other words, irrationality, like the chicken and the antibiotic, is itself a humanitarian device that maintains a certain condition of governance where 'Africans' are imagined as being in deficit of rationality and good behavior. Claims of irrationality justify (and mask the political nature of) intervention.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.