2011 Winner

A World Unmade

Diabetes and the Occult in Northern Ghana

by Amy Moran-Thomas

The paper discusses how changing diets, changing availability of primary health care, global pharmaceutical and agricultural trade, and local conceptions of health and commensality collide in the life experiences of individuals in northern Ghana who are diagnosed with newly emergent forms of “tropical” or “African” diabetes that blur boundaries between Type 1 and Type 2.