Health Rumours and Global-Local Knowledge: Science, Nonsense and Resistance

Too often, an interest in health rumours stalls at a focus on their falseness and how they hinder health promotion or intervention efforts (Kaler, 2009). However, rumours that circulate about bodies and health are more than misinformation, falsehoods, or inconveniences. Such rumours are often politically and sociologically significant and can perhaps carry “moral truth” (Finnström, 2008). In this talk, I will trace two sets of health rumours circulating in sub-Saharan Africa, one in post-colonial northern Uganda and one in Swaziland in the context of HIV prevention. The rumours in Uganda centre around food provided as humanitarian aid causing various illnesses and body problems (Finnström, 2008, Branch, 2011), while in Swaziland, the disposal of the foreskin post-circumcision was the focus of rumours, also including one about health. I consider these rumours as sites of resistance to international humanitarian aid and to global health programming respectively. These health rumours, I argue, constitute critiques of, and resistance to the politics and biopolitics of aid and global health. As such they can be understood as counter-epistemologies (Kaler, 2009). While rumours are often looked to providing a lens on differences or indeed ignorance in ‘other’ cultures, they are also useful as a mirror, reflecting back to the global north some of the inconsistencies and assumptions of our international interventions. In reading health rumours as resistance, it is relevant to consider aid and global health as potential extensions of colonialism, and how their role in arbitrating authoritative knowledge contributes to their governance power. Vincanne Adams (2010) discussion of “Arbitrating Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense Through Health” and Amy Kaler’s (2009) discussion of rumours about fertility as counter-epistemology contribute to such a reading of health rumours in relation to humanitarian and global health efforts.