Global Health and the Village: Transnational Contexts Governing Birth in Northern Uganda

The accounts of women navigating pregnancy in a post-conflict setting are characterized by widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and inadequate health services. In investigating maternity care and birth, Global Health and The Village examines a remote rural agrarian region of northern Uganda, a region characterized by a weak healthcare system in the aftermath of decades long armed conflict.

Drawing on extensive original qualitative research, Global Health and The Village brings the complex local and transnational factors governing women's access to safe maternity care into focus. As well as examining local cultural, social, economic, and health system factors shaping maternity care and birth, Rudrum analyzes the encounter between ambitious global health goals and the local realities of a remote, agrarian, post-conflict community with poor health services. Interrogating how culture and technical problems are framed in international health interventions, it becomes clear that the objectifying and colonizing premises on which interventions are based mean that rather than being "unanticipated," the negative consequences that too often result from international interventions in health are structurally determined.