The COVID-19 pandemic has made evident that the field of global health – its practices, norms, and failures – has the power to shape the lives of billions. Global health perspectives on the role of religion, however, are strikingly limited. Uncovering the points where religion and global health have connected across the twentieth century, focusing on Ghana, provides an opportunity to challenge narrow approaches. In Religion in Global Health and Development Benjamin Walker shows that the religious features of colonial state architecture were still operating by the turn of the twenty-first century. Walker surveys the establishment of colonial development projects in the twentieth century, with a focus on the period between 1940 and 1990. Crossing the colonial-postcolonial divide, analyzing local contexts in conjunction with the many layers of international organizations, and identifying surprisingly neglected streams of personnel and funding (particularly from Dutch and West German Catholics), this in-depth history offers new ways of conceptualizing global health. Patchworks of international humanitarian intervention, fragmented government services, local communities, and the actions of many foreign powers combined to create health services and the state in Ghana. Religion in Global Health and Development shows that religion and religious actors were critical to this process – socially, culturally, and politically.

Contents

• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
  • METHODOLOGY
  • MAKING DEVELOPMENT: EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY GOLD COAST
• 1. The Colonial Foundations of Global Health: Britain, Gold Coast, and Ghana, 1919–61
  • MEDICAL MISSIONARIES AND THE EXPANSION OF THE COLONIAL STATE
  • THE POSTWAR VOLUNTARY SECTOR
  • THE BOUNDARIES AND BENEFICIARIES OF THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR: MEDICAL MISSIONS AT KWAHU AND SANDEMA
  • CONCLUSION
• 2. Religion and Africanising Health: Ghana, 1957–68
  • THE AFRICANISATION OF MEDICAL MISSION IN DECOLONISING GHANA
  • CHRISTIANITY, MISSION, AND KWAME NKRUMAH
  • MEDICAL MISSION AND EARLY POSTCOLONIAL GHANAIAN HIGH POLITICS
  • CONCLUSION
• 3. Reframing Postcolonial International Health: Ghana, the Netherlands, and West Germany, 1957–90
  • FASTENAKTION AND EUROPEAN POSTWAR RENEWAL: WEST GERMAN AND DUTCH MEDICAL MISSION IN GHANA
  • MISEREOR AND GHANAIAN DEVELOPMENT: EXPERIENCES, IDENTITIES, AND NEGOTIATIONS IN MISSION
  • GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT NETWORKS AND THE DUTCH FOCUS ON GHANA
  • CONCLUSION
• 4. International Health Campaigns and Christian Mission: Ghana, Europe, and North America, 1950–94
  • ‘A GHANAIAN ABRAHAM LINCOLN’: SMALLPOX, MEASLES, AND THE MEDICAL SCHOOL
  • RELIGIOUS NETWORKS DISTRIBUTING AID: 1960–83
  • CONCLUSION
• 5. Primary Health Care, Global Health, and Medical Mission: Ghana, the WHO, and the World Council of Churches, 1960–2000
  • RESILIENT MISSION: MAKING HEALTH AMIDST SCARCITY AND COLLAPSE
  • MISSION MAKING GLOBAL HEALTH: CHRISTIAN MEDICAL COMMISION AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
  • CATHOLIC MISSIONS STARTING AND SUSTAINING PRIMARY HEALTH CARE IN GHANA
  • CONCLUSION
• Conclusion: Religion, the Ghanaian State, and the Future of Global Health
• Appendix. Catholic Health Services in Ghana, January–April 1982
• Notes

Legal deposit first quarter 2022

Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Religion in global health and development : the case of twentieth-century Ghana / Benjamin Bronnert Walker.

Names: Walker, Benjamin Bronnert, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210350962 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210351047 | ISBN 9780228010524 (cloth) | ISBN 9780228011699 (paper) | ISBN 9780228011590 (ePDF) | ISBN 9780228011606 (ePUB) | ISBN 9780228013662 (Open access PDF)

Subjects: lcsh: World health—History—20th century. | lcsh: Health—Religious aspects—Christianity. | lcsh: Missions, Medical—Ghana—History—20th century. | lcsh: Public health—Ghana—History—20th century.

Classification: lcc ra441 .w35 2022 | ddc 362.109667—dc23

This book was typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon.