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4 - The Salvation Agenda

Medical Humanitarianism and the Response to Cholera

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2020

Simukai Chigudu
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter looks at the functioning, politics and experiences of the extraordinary assemblage of institutions and individuals that ultimately constituted the emergency response to cholera. The process of coordinating a large-scale humanitarian relief effort was riven with competing claims to leadership, authority and legitimacy within and between different government and humanitarian bodies. However, as I argue in this chapter, these heterogeneous positions converged on the ineluctable and morally unimpeachable logic of ‘saving lives’. I call this logic ‘the salvation agenda’. The salvation agenda represented a bottom-line agreement that reconciled competing experiences of and viewpoints about the crisis to offer necessary and vital palliation in the face of cholera. Nevertheless, the exigency of saving lives did not, and could not, address the background socio-economic conditions that led to the epidemic. As such, I suggest that the salvation agenda inadvertently helped to perpetuate and, in some ways, exacerbate existing social hierarchies in Zimbabwe while ceding ‘moral ownership’ of the outbreak to a technical, internationalised, ostensibly ethical and apolitical humanitarian apparatus.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Political Life of an Epidemic
Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe
, pp. 123 - 154
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • The Salvation Agenda
  • Simukai Chigudu, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Political Life of an Epidemic
  • Online publication: 10 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773928.006
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  • The Salvation Agenda
  • Simukai Chigudu, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Political Life of an Epidemic
  • Online publication: 10 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773928.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • The Salvation Agenda
  • Simukai Chigudu, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Political Life of an Epidemic
  • Online publication: 10 January 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108773928.006
Available formats
×