We have recently had a paper from our HOPESAM project accepted for publication the journal Social Science & Medicine. The paper reports on the qualitative research we undertook with a cohort of women caring for children who had recently recovered from SAM (severe acute malnutrition) and were recuperating within the high density urban and suburban districts of Harare, Zimbabwe. The paper identifies several dimensions of the women’s lives that impede their caring capabilities. Given the country’s status as a global ‘hunger hotspot’ (FAO/WFP, 2022), it should not be surprising that food insecurity featured prominently amongst these. Beyond this, the paper highlights the women’s uneven access to informal social protection, experiences that are reflective of what recent scholarship refers to as examples of ‘uncaring’ or ‘noncaring,’ as well as their responses to discourses of shame and stigma within the community and hospital settings. The paper concludes by considering what this means for understanding of, and responses to, the bodies encountered in the place of global health research and interventions. The research undertaken for this project fed into another study, CO-SAM, which is currently on going. Watch this space for more news on this!
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Professor Tim Brown 