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

by Eric Silla (Author)

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 beparticularly 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.

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

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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 (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,730,400 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Bruce Whitehouse (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.