The Fight against Counterfeit Medication: An Anthropology of Transnational Crime Control in Africa

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Julia Hornberger
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2013 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 240306178

• Final Report Year: 2020

Final Report Abstract

In the last 20 years there has been a certain hype around the circulation of fake medication. This has called a wide range of actors onto the stage which dedicated their time and attention to curtail this circulation of dangerous goods. These actors are not only public health officials, but also police officers and packaging experts. They put huge effort into distinguishing good medication from bad medication. Yet a lot of these efforts are in vein as distinction remains murky and is often beyond the power and knowledge of the actors. This project then has looked at what these security efforts do if it is not separating good medication from bad medication. The findings of the project show that the concern for health which is emblematically captured in the idea of fake medication serves the security sector to advance and extend their own ambit with a moral high ground which they normally lack. While the interplay of health and security has a long history, the project shows how in contemporary times, around the figure of fake medication, in a world of porous boundaries and global trade, the value of security can easily overrule the important concern of access to affordable medication.

Publications

• 2015. “‘Ethnic enclave of a special sort?’ Mozambicans in La Rochelle, Johannesburg”. Journal of Southern African Studies 41 (1): 141-158
  Moyo, Khangelani and Erma Cossa
  
• 2016. Policing Counterfeit Medication. In Lenore Manderson, Anita Hardon and Elizabeth Cartwright (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology. London: Routledge
  Hornberger, Julia
  
• 2017. On Complicity. In Didier Fassin (ed.) Writing the World of Policing. The Difference Ethnography Makes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 42-61
  Hornberger, Julia
  
• 2017. “Spiritual brokers: African pastors and the mediation of migratory processes.” Critical African Studies 9 (2): 226-240
  Rafael Cazarin, Erma Cossa
  
• 2018. “From Drug Safety to Drug Security: A Contemporary Shift in the Policing of Health.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly 32 (3): 365–83
  Hornberger, Julia
  
• 2019. “Who Is the Fake One Now? Questions of Quackery, Worldliness and Legitimacy.” Critical Public Health 29 (4): 484–93
  Hornberger, Julia