Social Science Research Council

"Medical Welfare and Transnational Philanthropy in Mozambique"

How is healthcare being transformed from a state responsibility to a field of philanthropic intervention in Mozambique? My research on practices of philanthropy and processes of privatization asks how state and non-state interests are producing new forms of medical welfare and social interventions in contemporary Mozambique. How do state transformation and philanthropic investment reconfigure and reproduce public and private domains? How do gendered family relationships become privileged sites of intervention in the context of state transformation? How and among whom do these transformations and interventions become the subjects of contestation and consensus? Practices as diverse as census-taking, medical research and social empowerment contribute to the constitution of gendered relationships between contemporary medical philanthropy and liberal figurations of family and state.

Drawing on theories of the gift and social reproduction, my ethnographic research will focus on public-private partnerships to understand the role of philanthropic institutions in contemporary Mozambique. Using institutional ethnography, in-depth interviews, and media analysis, I aim to understand the practices through which long-standing social technologies and interventions are being newly deployed in contemporary Mozambique.