1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910838235303321

Autore

Halvorson Britt

Titolo

Conversionary Sites : Transforming Medical Aid and Global Christianity from Madagascar to Minnesota / / Britt Halvorson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago : , : University of Chicago Press, , [2018]

©2018

ISBN

0-226-55743-X

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (298 pages)

Collana

Chicago scholarship online

Disciplina

266

Soggetti

Medical assistance, American - Madagascar

Faith-based human services - Madagascar

Faith-based human services - Minnesota

Missions, Medical - Madagascar

Missions, Medical - Social aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction. Conversionary Sites in Global Christianities -- Chapter One. Remembering and Forgetting through Medical Aid Work -- Chapter Two. Becoming Humanitarians -- Chapter Three. Redeeming Medical Waste, Making Medical Relief -- Chapter 4. Restructuring Value in Antananarivo -- Chapter Five. Translating Aid, Brokering Identity -- Conclusions. Aid's End Times -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Drawing on more than two years of participant observation in the American Midwest and in Madagascar among Lutheran clinicians, volunteer laborers, healers, evangelists, and former missionaries, Conversionary Sites investigates the role of religion in the globalization of medicine. Based on immersive research of a transnational Christian medical aid program, Britt Halvorson tells the story of a thirty-year-old initiative that aimed to professionalize and modernize colonial-era evangelism. Creatively blending perspectives on humanitarianism, global medicine, and the anthropology of Christianity, she argues that the cultural spaces created by these programs operate as multistranded "conversionary sites," where questions of global inequality,



transnational religious fellowship, and postcolonial cultural and economic forces are negotiated.   A nuanced critique of the ambivalent relationships among religion, capitalism, and humanitarian aid, Conversionary Sites draws important connections between religion and science, capitalism and charity, and the US and the Global South.