London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Anthropologists of Global Health are increasingly interested in the places and moments at which “health” comes to figure and to matter, tracking states of health through data driven imaginaries to consider the contraction and expansion of political opportunities associated with different scientific and bureaucratic visions of public health.  

In response, many medical anthropologists are advocating a parallel “conceptualization of health from other places” (Yates Doerr and Carney, 2015). Based on research with Senegalese artists working in the popular ecology tradition of Set Setal, this paper examines how these artists visually interrogate and construct “health”. Research with artists, Branwyn argues, expands the conceptual reach of medical anthropology in important ways. Examining how these actors craft images addressing public health can suggest ways in which we might seek to decolonize, embed and sharpen health communication strategies