Decolonizing Medicine and Global Health

Their histories tightly interwoven, one can hardly underestimate how significant ‘modern’ biomedicine has been for the colonial project and vice versa. In a first step, this seminar will explore the ways in which biomedicine and colonialism co-constituted and mutually benefitted from each other throughout decades of colonial subjugation. It will then work out the multifaceted legacy of this calamitous relationship. Continuous unethical medical experimenting with the racialized Other; the White body constituting the norm in medical training; insufficient distribution of essential medicines and life-saving vaccines to populations in the ‘Global South’; pharmaceutical companies’ unscrupulous profiteering from indigenous knowledge. These are only a few examples of how colonial logics linger on, profoundly restricting racialized and minoritized people’s capacity to sustain their health and wellbeing down to the present day. Finally, students will get to know activist initiatives that have committed themselves to fight against racism and discrimination in medical practice and education in Berlin and beyond.