Description
Book SynopsisIn this unprecedented account of the dynamics of Nigeria's pharmaceutical markets, Kristin Peterson gives us a sobering ethnographic analysis of the effects of speculation and "development" as they reverberate across markets and continents, and play out in everyday interpersonal transactions.
Trade Review“Peterson’s account, which at times personifies this complex history through dialogue and vivid scene setting, does not offer solutions per se but may be instructive in understanding challenges in other countries that rely on informal markets, as well as how global market forces can have a ripple effect.” -- Jessica Bylander * Health Affairs *
"The account
Speculative Markets provides is itself is densely layered, mimicking the story it tells. The tone and approach shifts and turns as Peterson guides us through Idumota’s crowded marketplace and through global capital." -- Anne Pollock * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *
“
Speculative Markets tells a remarkable story of market creation, destruction, and rebuilding. It is a clear-sighted, hard-hitting book, but not a despairing one (it ends, in fact, on a distinctively optimistic note). It is also a book that demonstrates the contribution that ethnographic research can make to our understanding of the lives of pharmaceuticals…” -- Javier Lezaun * Somatosphere *
“[A] highly-detailed, carefully analyzed and enlightening piece of work, illuminating much of the complexities of African drug markets (and of markets and industries beyond Africa), with insights that will appeal to a broad audience.” -- Emilie Cloatre * Somatosphere *
“Kristin Peterson’s work finds root here and adds fresh perspective to well-worn conversation of drug markets and their machinations. … This is an important contribution, and it comes during a vital moment in global health. As diverse fields of research and industry continue to work toward equity of health for all, and attention is increasingly oriented forward, it is my hope that Peterson’s attention to historical detail can be a tool for thinking about how to proceed.”
-- Ryan Whitacre * Global Public Health *
“Kristin Peterson’s new ethnography looks carefully at the Nigerian pharmaceutical market, paying special attention to the ways that the drug trade links West Africa within a larger global economy. … The book avoids the usual discourse of corporate greed, instead focusing on the ‘structural logics of pharmaceutical capital through which corporate practices can be understood.’ It is a timely and fascinating study.” -- Carla Nappi * New Books in Sociology *
“Peterson suggests that an anthropology of global health might tell us about the transition from state-based production of health to a global one. It elucidates how global economic processes effecting pharmaceuticals have local outcomes, how processes relying on global connections are at work in the making of health. Most importantly she shows how market systems are delivering health care and the effects of these less planned economies on quality and access to pharmaceuticals simultaneously generating uncertainty and capital for those who trade in them.” -- Andrew McDowell * Biosocieties *
"
Speculative Markets is a boldly compelling example of ethnography that is at once thoroughly grounded in extensive fieldwork in one place..., but also situated in a rich and impressive historical narrative and a remarkably comprehensive account of relevant large-scale political-economic forces.... Peterson’s outstanding book will be of interest to historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists, equally worth reading if one is an Africa specialist or a student of the history of medicine, public health, or global political economy." -- Daniel Jordan Smith * Bulletin of the History of Medicine *
"A captivating, beautifully written description of the dynamics of Nigeria’s drug industry." -- Olubukola S. Adesina * African Studies Quarterly *
"Peterson uses ethnographic encounters deftly, weaving vignettes of her informants into more dense accounts of the processes at once local, national, regional, and global that affect their lives." -- Neil Carrier * American Anthropologist *
"
Speculative Markets is an extraordinary first book. There are of course many wonderful ethnographies of contemporary West Africa, but none that draws a clear connection among legislation, markets, and behavior. . . . [F]or scholars interested in contemporary economic anthropology, development theory, and global health, this book is a must-read." -- Kristin Peterson * American Ethnologist *
Table of ContentsPreface vii
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction. Chemical Multitudes: Fake Drugs and Pharmaceutical Regulation in Nigeria 1
1. Idumota: Pharmacists, Traders, and the New Free Market 25
2. Risky Populations: Drug Industry Divestment and Militarized Austerity 53
3. Regulation as a Problem of Discernment: Open Markets in the Making 80
4. Derivative Life: Nominalization and the Logic of the Hustle 103
5. Chemical Arbitrage: A Social Life of Bioequivalence 126
6. Marketing Indefinite Monopolies: Intellectual Property, Debt, and Drug Geopolitics 155
Conclusion. Old Specters, New Dreams 177
Notes 185
Bibliography 209
Index 233
