Research Catalog

Synthesizing hope : matter, knowledge, and place in South African drug discovery

Title
Synthesizing hope : matter, knowledge, and place in South African drug discovery / Anne Pollock.
Author
Pollock, Anne, 1975-
Publication
Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

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TextUse in library Sc E 19-1541Schomburg Center - Research & Reference

Details

Description
191 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
Summary
Synthesizing Hope opens up the material and social world of pharmaceuticals by focusing on an unexpected place: iThemba Pharmaceuticals. Founded in 2009 with a name taken from the Zulu word for hope, the small South African startup with an elite international scientific board was tasked with drug discovery for tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria. Anne Pollock uses this company as an entry point for exploring how the location of the scientific knowledge production matters, not only for the raw materials, production, licensing, and distribution of pharmaceuticals but also for the making of basic scientific knowledge. Consideration of this case exposes the limitations of global health frameworks that implicitly posit rich countries as the only sites of knowledge production. Analysis of iThemba identifies the problems inherent in global north/south divides at the same time as it highlights what is at stake in who makes knowledge and where. It also provides a concrete example for consideration of the contexts and practices of postcolonial science, its constraints, and its promise. Synthesizing Hope explores the many legacies that create conditions of possibility for South African drug discovery, especially the specific form of settler colonialism characterized by apartheid and resource extraction. Paying attention to the infrastructures and laboratory processes of drug discovery underscores the materiality of pharmaceuticals from the perspective of their makers, and tracing the intellectual and material infrastructures of South African drug discovery contributes new insights about larger social, political, and economic orders.
Subjects
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Introduction: Hope in South African drug discovery -- Questioning the bifurcations in global health discourses -- In the shadows of the dynamite factory -- Science for a post-apartheid South Africa -- "African solutions for african problems" -- Im/materiality of pharmaceutical knowledge making -- Hope in flow -- Epilogue: The afterlives of hope.
Call Number
Sc E 19-1541
ISBN
  • 9780226629049
  • 022662904X
  • 9780226629186
  • 022662918X
  • 9780226629216 (canceled/invalid)
LCCN
2018051002
OCLC
1051682870
Author
Pollock, Anne, 1975- author.
Title
Synthesizing hope : matter, knowledge, and place in South African drug discovery / Anne Pollock.
Publisher
Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.
Type of Content
text
Type of Medium
unmediated
Type of Carrier
volume
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Research Call Number
Sc E 19-1541
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