This dissertation was motivated by the misrepresentation of, and apparent lack of knowledge about, indigenous medicine in Mozambique. This consequently raised the need to reveal the epistemologies of health, illness and healing; rewrite the historiography; and develop the knowledge of and about this medicine. The dissertation analyses illness representation and the political economy of health. The thesis defended is that indigenous medicine is a form of medical knowledge and practice that represents its illness, therapy and efficacy according to specific epistemological foundations, rooted in the local society and culture yet it has been misrepresented by local discourses, agencies and practices that battle to control health resources, knowledge and power in Mozambique. Within this, biomedical health paradigms, bodies, and representations have been imposed onto an imagined Official National Health Service (ONHS) whilst people, on the other hand, represent, legitimise, and seek therapy simultaneously in different epistemologies and practices of medicine within the therapeutic landscape creating a Contextual National Health Service (CNHS). This political economy of health is contingent on historical, socio-economical, political and geopolitical productions and constructions of health and efficacy within Mozambique's public health field. Research and health development needs to rewrite the historiography of indigenous medicine based on ethnographically sensitive material and linguistic competence. The construction and justification of this argument is made in seven chapters. The study was carried out in Maputo City and Manhiça district and relied on participant observation. It also uses a mixture of other qualitative methods which encompassed formal and informal interviews, documenting of life histories, desk review, and participatory learning for action (PLA).

This dissertation focuses on the formation and governance of international clinical research collaborations in the field of regenerative stem cell medicine, and analyzes these processes against the background of the current transition to a multipolarizing scientific world system. The empirical point of departure of this study is an ethnographic analysis of the establishment of a trans-continental academia-centered clinical trials infrastructure, between researchers based in China, Hong Kong and the USA. Field research was carried out in mainland China and Hong Kong amongst scientists, clinical researchers, medical entrepreneurs, government regulators and patients, between April 2010 and May 2011. The dissertation contributes to debates on the processes and challenges that surround the global distribution of evidence-based medicine clinical research standards, and the study of science and globalization in the context of the emergence of new scientific, economic and geopolitical center regions in the world, with a particular focus on literature that comments on the scientific ascent of the People's Republic of China. The dissertation reveals that the global diffusion of evidence-based clinical research standards, in regenerative stem cell medicine, is accompanied by the surfacing of vital forms of resistance and the creation of novel transnational spaces of alter-standardization, in which less rigorous, physician-based forms of experimental clinical practice are endorsed, publicized and tried to be legitimized. The dissertation uncovers, furthermore, that the creation of internationally standardized research zones, in the clinical stem cell field, is not necessarily a stable or constant process. The implementation of internationally recognized standards can be highly temporary and depends upon activation in specific situational contexts. Multiple modalities of experimental clinical practices continue to exist side by side to each other. Another line of theorization in this study focuses on the contemporary dynamics of global scientific multipolarization, and explores the empirical and theoretical implications of this trend for international clinical research collaborations. The dissertation argues that a new mode of clinical research partnerships may gradually be emerging. Processes of collective financiering and joint-innovation are giving rise to changing patterns of labour division, decision-making, benefit sharing, profit sharing and revised forms of ownership regarding inventions and research data. Based on a reflective engagement with postcolonial approaches to the study of science and technology, the dissertation concludes that new analytical perspectives are required, through which the empirical transformations and impact associated with the move toward a multipolarizing science system, can be captured in a more nuanced, and comprehensive manner.

The thesis examines the complex relationship between individual experiences of breast cancer and the wider social, political and discursive context in which they are located. It focuses on how Spanish women living with breast cancer define their own health priorities by exploring their experiences and their dissatisfactions, which appear to have been excluded from public and biomedical discourses. The data was collected in a provincial city in Western Spain and focused on the lived experiences of 32 women living and surviving breast cancer. Interviews were mainly conducted in the headquarters of the Spanish Association against Cancer of that region, but also at women's homes and in other public spaces. Based upon a framework of narratives of resistance, grounded in feminist theory, critical medical anthropology and sociology, an ethnographic approach allowed a focus on breast cancer patients and survivors as ‘experts' of their own health, addressing fundamental concerns in the production of knowledge. The thesis discusses the relationship between breast cancer and social inequality. It examines the dramatic ways that structures of power such as class, age, gender, and disability, intersect and “conspire” through a web of social beliefs, practices, norms and expectations to shape, and exacerbate, women's experiences of illness, in particular, of those women who need health care the most. The research also highlights the ways in which the experiential symptoms of breast cancer are portrayed and perceived in public and medical discourses in sexual terms or physiological terms, which ignores the wider social and embodied contexts of women's experiences. By answering the call made by feminist writers such as Wilkinson (2001) and Broom (2000) to listening to the narratives of resistance of these Spanish women, this study therefore offers both a particular cultural account of their collaboration with a range of institutions such as health professionals, charities, the family and the social care system, but also valuable lay experiences which are more generally relevant to wider healthcare practice and policy.