Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Global Health Interventions: The Military, The Magic Bullet, The Deterministic Model-And Intervention Otherwise, Emily Yates-Doerr, Lauren Carruth, Gideon Lasco, Rosario García-Meza

Development Studies Faculty Publications

"Intervention" is central to global health, but the significance and effects of how intervention is practiced are often taken for granted. This review takes interventions into health and medicine as subjects for ethnographic inquiry. We highlight three lines of anthropological contributions: studies of global health interventions that serve imperial and military objectives, studies of "magic bullet" interventions arising from laboratory science, and studies of interventions based on deterministic modeling techniques. We then outline examples of "intervention otherwise," in which people build relations of solidarity and care through global health programming, design interventions to be interactive and adaptable, and use data …