Health and healing are distinctive domains as far as the pursuit of people s well-being is concerned. In Africa, both fields have increasingly become subject to monetization and commodification, in short, the market. Based on extensive fieldwork in nine African countries by scholars with diverse academic backgrounds, this volume offers different perspectives on the emerging markets and the way medical staff, patients, households and institutions navigate them in their quest for well-being. By presenting a detailed economic ethnography of this multifacetted process of navigating the market, the book sets a new agenda for research as a result of the current predicaments facing health and healing in African societies.

This book explores the notion of agency in a range of empirical situations in Africa. Agency directs our quest for an understanding of the dynamics and social transformations of African situations to the domains of creativity, inventiveness and reflexivity. It emphasizes the possibilities individuals and social groups perceive when faced with the constraints that tend to mark African social life. The case studies provide an alternative view of people and society in Africa by looking at the ways social strength is created in the hope of overcoming many of the structural limitations encountered in daily life. 'Strength beyond Structure' challenges the optimism that is engrained in the development rhetoric about Africa by making agency the subject of empirical scrutiny.

"Situating Globality" challenges the dominant view that globalization is a primary threat to African societies and economies. It explores how these societies are appropriating elements of the emerging global culture, arguing the significance of this appropriation in local struggles, the expression of critical thinking, ideologies and ritual styles of behaviour. Combining an interest for micro-level processes of situating the multifaceted process of globality with the exploration of reflexivity, creativity and the production of knowledge, "Situating Globality" straddles the divide between anthropological and philosophical representations of Africa in the new world order. The first section examines philosophical issues relating to the production of knowledge in and about Africa from a globalizing perspective, while the other sections include case studies showing how these processes are accommodated in everyday life.