Tag: Power inequalities

The foreign gaze: authorship in academic global health

By Seye Abimbola

“There is a problem of gaze at the heart of academic global health. It is difficult to name. […] Recent bibliometric analyses confirm autorship imbalances patterns that are largely explained by entrenched power asymmetries in global health partnerships — between researchers in high-income countries (often the source of funds and agenda) and those in middle-income and especially low-income countries (where the research is often conducted). But we cannot talk about authorship without grappling with who we are as authors, who we imagine we write for (i.e., gaze), and the position or standpoint from which we write (i.e., pose).”

Drawing on the ideas of ‘foreign’ and ‘local’ gaze, Abimbola highlights how imbalances in autorship are generally a reflection of wider power inequalities in the production and dissemination of knowledge in global health.

Read the article here.

Rethinking Global Health: Frameworks of Power

By Rochelle A. Burgess

This book reflects and analyses the working of power in the field of global health– and what this goes on to produce. It asks the pivotal questions of, ‘who is global health for’ and ‘what is it that limits our ability to build responses that meet people where they are?’

Covering a wide range of topics from global mental health to Ebola, this book combines power analyses with interviews and personal reflections spanning the author’s decade-long career in global health. It interrogates how the search for global solutions can often end up far from where we anticipated. It also introduces readers to different frameworks for power analyses in the field, including an adaptation of the ‘matrix of domination’ for global health practice. Through this work, Dr Burgess develops a new model of Transformative Global Health, a framework that calls researchers and practitioners to adopt new orienting principles, placing community interests and voices at the heart of global health planning and solutions at all times.

Access the book here.

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