Susan Reynolds Whyte
Professor
Institut for Antropologi
Øster Farimagsgade 5
1014 København K
Inspired by the philosophy of pragmatism and by the methods of ethnography, I do research and research training on contemporary social issues. Overall, I am concerned with attempts by persons and societies to secure well-being, with all the contradictions and uncertainties that entails. My work involves various forms of collaboration with colleagues in Denmark and Africa. For over two decades I have been involved in research capacity strengthening projects with universities in Uganda.
Regionally, I have done fieldwork in Tanzania, Kenya, and most extensively in Uganda.
Member of the researcher group Health and Life Conditions.
Research fields:
- Lifeworlds and the pursuit of well-being: long term fieldwork in Uganda on pragmatics and management of uncertainty in situations of everyday life and relations to family/significant others; life course, time and inter-subjectivity
- Perceptions of health and illness, managing threats to health: conceptions of body, mind, and person, explanations of misfortune, the relation of illness perceptions to possibilities of treatment (research in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda)
- Health care systems, policy and interventions: research in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda on composite health systems, pharmaceuticals between the public and private sectors, the gap between policy and practice, management of chronic conditions, concept of ‘social technology’
- Globalization: the movements of ideas, discourses and commodities working in two topical areas: disability and global health technologies .
- Relations between generations: historical and genealogical generations in light of changing economic, political, epidemiological, demographic conditions.
- Changing human security: response to transformative historical events such as the AIDS epidemic and armed conflict in Africa
I am currently working in several multi-disciplinary projects:
- Community Innovation for Healthy Aging under Centre for Healthy Aging (Copenhagen University)
- Children and Medicine in Uganda (Makerere & Copenhagen Universities)
- Governing Transition: Land and Trust in Northern Uganda (Gulu, Aarhus, & Copenhagen Universities)
- Post-conflict Primary Health Care (Gulu, Southern Denmark, & Copenhagen Universities)
- Building Stronger Universities (Gulu, Aalborg, Roskilde, Aarhus, & Copenhagen Universities
- Translating Global Health Technologies (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Special Priority Programme ‘Adaptation and Creativity in Africa’)
Selected publications:
Ingstad, Benedicte & S.R. Whyte, eds. 1995. Disability and Culture. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press.
Whyte, S.R. 1997. Questioning Misfortune: The Pragmatics of Uncertainty in Eastern Uganda. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Amaury Talbot Prize 1997)
Whyte, S.R., S. van der Geest & Anita Hardon. 2002. Social Lives of Medicines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ingstad, Benedicte & SR Whyte (eds.) 2007. Disability in Local and Global Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Alber, Erdmute, Sjaak van der Geest, SR Whyte (eds.) 2008. Generations in Africa: Connections and Conflicts. Münster: LIT Verlag.
Whyte, S.R. (ed) 2014. Second Chances: Surviving AIDS in Uganda.. Durham: Duke University Press.
ID: 5194
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Antropologi og Medicin i Dialog
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Household and familial resemblance in risk factors for type 2 diabetes and related cardiometabolic diseases in rural Uganda sample: a cross-sectional community
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Anger and bitter hearts: The spread of suicide in northern Ugandan families
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