The editors of Anthropoliteia are happy to continue an ongoing series The Anthropoliteia #BlackLivesMatterSyllabus Project, which will mobilize anthropological work as a pedagogical exercise addressing the confluence of race, policing and justice. You can see a growing bibliography of resources via our Mendeley feed.  In this post, Adia Benton discusses public health, Ebola, humanitarian aid, care, militarism, and evaluations of Black Lives on both sides of the Atlantic.

I teach courses in African studies and global health that focus on political economy, history and power. No matter the course content, I find that I have to undergo and perform several kinds of (dis)orientations with students: together, we destabilize dominant frames for talking, writing and learning about the African continent (for example, how does ‘race’ matter there); we identify what is “critical” about “critical approaches” to public health and biomedicine; and we interrogate what it means to study and ultimately work in the fields of public health and medicine, as this professional terrain shifts on a tension that pits rhetorics and practices of safety and care against those of security and discipline. Continue reading →