Documenting Death

"This powerful and compelling analysis of maternal mortality in rural Tanzania is a groundbreaking addition to scholarship on Africa and its public health challenges. Adrienne E. Strong presents a rich ethnography of hospital function and dysfunction, to which the voices of patients and staff add poignant detail. The ways in which state and global health policy shape maternal health and well-being frame individual narratives in a memorable testimony."--Carolyn Sargent, Professor of Anthropology, Washington University in St. Louis "Documenting Death is an arresting tale of life and death on a busy maternity ward in rural Tanzania. Drawing on a remarkable period of ethnographic fieldwork, Strong evocatively details the predicament of nurse midwives caught in the 'biobureaucracy' of global health projects and their audit trails. A significant contribution to medical anthropology and critical global health scholarship."--Margaret MacDonald, Associate Professor of Anthropology, York University