Framing Local Attitudes to a Modern Health Intervention in the Neoliberal Order – Culturalism and Malaria Control in Southeastern Nigeria

Abstract

Interventionists usually blame cultural factors and traditional attitudes for non-compliance of target populations, a framework Didier Fassin terms as culturalism. Despite their efforts, what the Roll Back Malaria employees find in southeastern Nigeria is a ‘troubling’ nonchalance towards the programme because target populations’ perceptions of malaria differ from the donor/programme perspective. The RBM employees cast the local attitude as culturalism, accordingly framing their exhortations in terms of this discourse. How the Roll Back Malaria employees deployed culturalism to fit with the neoliberal individualizing framework of current international health practices is one more nuanced analytical perspective the article brings to intervention literature.

Keywords

Culturalism malaria control global health southeastern Nigeria Nsukka neoliberalism transnational intervention

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