Pharmaceuticals in Divergence: Chakachua (Fakes), Fugitive Science, and Postcolonial Critique in Tanzania

Abstract

Powerful pharmaceuticals are readily available for purchase throughout Tanzania and global health workers decry this situation as dangerous and disordered, as if no rules govern the use of drugs in Africa. In the prevailing global health understanding, ‘truth’ lies in the laboratory science that goes into the making and proper prescription of drugs, and such deviations as ‘overuse’ and ‘misuse’ result from the fact that locals misunderstand what these drugs are and how they should be used. In this talk, based on 30 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Iringa, Tanzania, I demonstrate how my interlocuters experiment with ways to determine the ‘true’ nature of pharmaceuticals, differentiate types of drugs, and establish control over their variable capacities. I begin by discussing the problem of chakachua (or fake) drugs and the embodied epistemological practices employed by medical personnel and lay people in response to such conditions. I conceptualize these empirical practices as methods of “fugitive science” which at times reconfigure the capacities of drugs in ways that exceed biomedical frameworks. Finally, I consider critiques of pharmaceuticals as poisonous and interpret such critiques as astute analyses of the politics of life and biosecurity regimes which increasingly characterize global health initiatives in Africa.