Healing Our Differences: The Crisis of Global Health and the Politics of Identity

(Paperback)

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Healing Our Differences: The Crisis of Global Health and the Politics of Identity asserts that the public health mission and the question of an individual identity are inseparable. Airhihenbuwa deftly explains how the rise in a more uniform, apolitical view of healthcare and health services leads to the devaluation of individual cultures and communities that in turn leads to inequality in the outcome of health care. Citing examples in African and African American communities, Airhihenbuwa shows how an individual cultural need can be lost or silenced in the face of a single uniform statement of public health care. The opportunity presented in this book is one that allows readers to move beyond the individualized notion of identity by allowing instead a collective notion of identity, representative of a community with its own needs, cultural expressions, and meanings. This book affirms public health as a landscape where differences that make differences are promoted and encouraged. Such a public health landscape promotes multiple truths rather than a universal truth.

Reviews

Collins Airhihenbuwa has written a book which is at the intersection of a number of different disciplines: public health, and African Studies and African Philosophy. The breadth and ease with which he is able to draw upon and navigate his way through a lot of different material reflects the extent of his scholarship, and its breadth. He is able to effectively demonstrate how issues about health are both a health and a public matter in a manner which is convincing to both public health specialists and Africanists. Airhihenbuwa has written a book which is a must read to both Africanists and public health specialists. -- Sinfree Makoni, Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa
How a society understands the relationship between health and identity is crucial for how it views and practices democracy. Of course, the crisis of health is not merely a problem of the state, it is now a global problem affecting humanity in general, though in vastly different ways. Healing our Differences addresses with great clarity, insight, and sensitivity the global crisis of health and identity. With great originality and compassion, Healing Our Differences both articulates the complex relationship between matters of health, power, race, and justice while providing new language and a sense of hope for addressing an issue that is central to the struggle over human life and global democracy. This is a book that should be read by everyone concerned about the health of a democracy and the health of the vast populations who inhabit the planet. -- Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest

Author Bio

Collins O. Airhihenbuwa is professor in the department of biobehavioral health at Penn State University.