16 | Epistemic Violence, Coloniality, and Reparations | Eugene Richardson

Social Medicine On Air

Eugene Richardson (@real_ironist) joins us to discuss how global public health continues to use colonial frameworks for understanding health and disease, including for COVID-19 and Ebola modeling, and the need for reparations for health equity. He discusses how desocialized statistics support an unjust status quo, and how better forms of knowing can lead towards a world of justice.

Eugene Richardson MD PhD is an infectious disease physician and anthropologist who previously served as the clinical lead for Partners In Health’s Ebola response in Kono District, Sierra Leone, and has worked with the WHO and Africa CDC coordinating infectious disease response. His research focuses on biosocial approaches to epidemic disease prevention, containment, and treatment in sub-Saharan Africa; as part of this effort, he is chair of the Lancet Commission on Reparations and Redistributive Justice. He recently released Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020): bit.ly/3cdhB4h.

His recommended resources:

• Schwab, Tim (2020). "Are Bill Gates’s Billions Distorting Public Health Data?", The Nation: bit.ly/3pnPIu1

• Mbembe, Achille (2008). "What is Postcolonial Thinking? An Interview with Achille Mbembe", Eurozine: bit.ly/39kqjvP

• Richardson, Eugene (2020). "Colonizer, Interrupted", Democratic Left: bit.ly/3iSPkBh

• Vannini, Phillip (2008). "Critical Pragmatism," in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, ed. Lisa M. Given: bit.ly/2NDX3Yx