Reframing applied disease stigma research: a multilevel analysis of diabetes stigma in Ghana

Research suggests that rural and urban Ghanaians living with uncontrolled diabetes—typified by extreme weight loss—experience HIV/AIDS-related stigma. This paper reports a multilevel analysis of this stigma within the broader context of diabetes handicap in two rural communities. Two key findings emerge. First, the content of stigma constitutes social representations of HIV/AIDS, and to internalized and projected collective attributions of protracted illness to witchcraft or sorcery. Thus the stigma experienced by people with uncontrolled diabetes is not specific to the disease category ‘diabetes’ and distant others affected by it. Second, extreme biophysical disruption, which precipitates misperceptions, stigma and/or discrimination, is both cause and consequence of financial destitution and psychosocial neglect. Both forms of handicap have deeper pre-stigma roots in poverty and the socio-psychological and cultural impact of long-term illness. Thus the actuality or threat of diabetes stigma has to be understood in terms of diabetes handicap, which in turn has to be understood as a product of shared responses to long-term illness in communities constantly negotiating financial, health and psychological insecurities. The scope for multifaceted/multilevel intervention is considered taking into account the biophysical and psychological impact of illness and the sociopsychological and structural realities of diabetes care in Ghana

Witchcraft and the Gift: Killing and Healing in Northwest Zambia

This chapter on witchcraft in northwest Zambia shows that forms of asking and giving may be deployed to suspend suspicion about the motives of others, even as they possess the potential to kill. When a woman asks a witch for a gift of salt to flavor her food, the witch feigns generosity but forces that woman to join the coven in recompense. In becoming a witch, that woman kills one of her relatives, whose flesh is consumed by the cowitch. The cowitch, in turn, becomes indebted to her and must provide more human flesh. This cycle of death may be broken when a healer offers a gift of sacrificial blood to the accused witch in exchange for the victim’s life. Drawing on David Graeber’s concept of human economies as well as Peter Geschiere’s treatment of intimacy and trust in witchcraft discourse, this chapter shows that requests and gifts may constitute leaps of faith that are dangerous but also necessary to undertake