Pathways to Voluntary Labour: Storying Structural Violence in Kenya’s Primary Healthcare
We are pleased to welcome Kathy Dodworth to a new SKAPE seminar on voluntary health work in Kenya. During the seminar, she will share insights from her research and on-the-ground experiences, and offer new perspectives on community health. More info below
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered resurgent interest in voluntary work within public services in minority world settings, not least the UK. Historically, voluntarism’s seemingly idealist and cross-spectrum political appeal has allowed it to be recursively promoted as a leveller and a signifier of common humanity across borders. Such idealism, resting on the core tenets of liberal philosophy, masks structural inequalities within and between countries and thus the full ‘spectrum of voluntariness’ (Badurdeen, 2020). In this talk, Kathy will examine the extreme end of this spectrum in northern Kenya, whereby unpaid labour in community health is strongly structured by disadvantage and indeed can be understood as a form of violence. Drawing on the life stories of Community Health Volunteers, she unpacks different pathways to such work in the precarious environment of Isiolo. She concludes her findings give pause to the drive to ‘reverse innovate’ learning in community health to the UK’s NHS from Kenya, or indeed other African contexts, given such contexts cannot be equated.
Biography
Kathy Dodworth is a Research Fellow in the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is funded by the Wellcome Trust to explore the life stories of Community Health Volunteers in Kenya. She examines non-state legitimation in east Africa – the basis for her monograph Legitimation as Political Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and a new project funded by the DFG. She has published in the Social Science of Medicine, Journal of Social Policy, African Affairs, Health, Ethnography and Critical African Studies. For more visit kathydodworth.com.
This event will take place on Wednesday 24 January, 1-2 pm, in the SPS Chrystal Macmillan Conf Room 2.15.
If you prefer to attend virtually, please connect with Iñaki {inaki.goni@ed.ac.uk} to arrange for your online participation.