People Are Not the Same: Leprosy and Identity in Twentieth-Century Mali (Social History of Africa Series) [Hardcover]

Eric Silla (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0325000050 | ISBN-13: 978-0325000053 | Publication Date: May 1, 1998

Cloth Edition. A compelling account of leprosy in colonial and post-colonial Mali.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Silla's original, lucidly and imaginatively presented study sets a high standard for other historians to follow, tracing how those afflicted with other diseases have reacted over time to changing politics and treatments. A similar study of AIDS would be particularly welcome, considered, as here, historically, not just clinically, and showing in what ways the patients and their communities have been transformed. - Christopher Fyfe in JOURNAL OF MODERN AFRICAN STUDIES Eric Silla is proud of what his friends, the leprosy patients, have achieved: he tells their story engagingly in a refreshingly interesting book which helps us to understand how people cope with, and rise out of, a socially desperate disease. - Eldryd Parry in AFRICAN AFFAIRS --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Eric Silla received a B.A. from Yale College and a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University. His latest article appears in the Cahier d'Etudes Africaines (no. 144, 1996). A recent exhibit on leprosy at the United Nations featured several of his photographs from Mali. After teaching at Northwestern and Georgetown Universities, Dr. Silla created and directed a study-abroad program in Mali for the School for International Training. He is the recipient of Jacob Javits and Fulbright-Hays fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education. The Social Science Research Council and the Center for Arabic Study Abroad have also awarded him grants for study and research in Africa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Heinemann (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0325000050
• ISBN-13: 978-0325000053
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,377,468 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Social history as it ought to be done, February 13, 2001

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Bruce Whitehouse (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: People Are Not the Same: Leprosy and Identity in Twentieth-Century Mali (Social History of Africa Series) (Paperback)

Eric Silla's social history of leprosy (a.k.a. Hansen's disease) in Mali draws the reader into a penetrating exploration not just of a disease but of the regimes of stigma, treatment, and solidarity that have been constructed around it. The author makes use of his own interviews with dozens of subjects--those afflicted with Hansen's disease, as well as healers from both African and European medical traditions--to sketch a detailed picture of the effects this illness has had on a society at large.

These firsthand accounts are frank and often gripping, helping the reader to understand (insofar as it is possible) the depth of suffering caused not so much by the disease itself as by the manifold, and almost entirely unnecessary, social stigma that accompany it. By reinforcing his interviews with documentary evidence from French colonial clinics, leprosariums, and other sources, the author puts his subjects' stories in wider perspective. He even taps into centuries-old Arabic manuscripts for insight into the status and conditions of lepers in pre-colonial Mali.

Silla's obvious familiarity with many aspects of Malian society shows through his writing, his references to local language, proverbs, and history. This is the way social histories ought to be done, putting their primary subjects and their own words first whenever possible, making judicious use of historical documents, and keeping theory in the background where it belongs. "People Are Not the Same" is one of those rare studies which manages to enlighten without indulging either in obscurantist analysis or oversimplification.