AnthroPod 4. Saida Hodzic on Global Health Governance
Oct 21, 2013
Join a fascinating discussion about the WHO's motivations behind the study on female genital cutting. Explore the shift from population control to a rights-based framework and how medicalization influences public perception. Discover how big data and evidence shape health narratives, and why understanding gaps in knowledge is crucial. Hear insights into the interplay of science, politics, and media framing, revealing how they impact global health governance. Get ready for a critical look at how we interpret health claims!
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Framing Creates The Questions You Can Ask
- WHO treated the issue as a 'gap' in a preexisting fabric of harms, which fixed the study's frame before research began.
- That framing made certain questions invisible and preserved the assumption that cutting is primarily harmful.
Evidence To Counteract Sensationalism
- WHO aimed to counteract sensationalist claims and believed 'solid evidence' could correct prior exaggerations.
- The organization also realized it had partly produced sensationalism and sought to repair that image.
Medicalization Had Different Meanings
- 'Medicalization' in WHO discourse meant shifting cutting into health-professional contexts, not the anthropological sense of labeling social issues as medical.
- WHO worried research emphasizing health harms might encourage clinicalized versions of the practice.