Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana is an unusual volume that will appeal to a wide variety of people with diverse interests. It is a historical study, but with strong ethnographic underpinnings and a grounding in public health issues. The author says of her approach: “Understanding histories of bodily misfortune requires that we integrate political economy and socials history with cultural and epistemological questions. Because the human body is the site of productive and reproductive labour, a source of ethnic and gender and generational identity, and a primary site for thought and experience, this integration is particularly important where questions of health and the human body are concerned” (page 22).
Professor Julie Livingston has been teaching history at Rutgers University in New Jersey since 2003. In 1992 and 1993, she completed two masters at Boston University, the second being an MPH. She then went on to Emory University to do her doctorate in African history. This brought her to Botswana where one of her bases was at Cheshire Homes in Mogoditshane. Her main interviews were conducted between 1997 and 1999 in Diphaleng, Thamaga, Kumakwane, Mmopane and elsewhere. Livingston has studied many aspects of disability including HIV/AIDS, aging and chronic illness. She has experienced her own “long and debilitating illness”.
