Paper short abstract:

In 1960s Kenya, public hospitals projected a vision of civic entitlement and medical modernity. Today they remain as ambivalent materializations of both progress and decay. I attend to efforts, amidst this ambivalence, to reach for a public health in an era of privatization and growing inequality.

Paper long abstract:

In 1960s Kenya, progressive dreams of a postcolonial public health focused on health infrastructures, the most impressive being the building of modern, state-of-the-art public hospitals. These solidly built structures materialized an anticipated future, of medical modernity, public service and a modern state, and an associated civic politics of entitlement, obligation and belonging. Fifty years later, these buildings remain - ambivalent symbols of past utopias and present dystopias, materializations of both progress and decay. This paper engages with this ambivalence. When medical progress, public hospitals and the state no longer cohere, people reach for the future through other means. I attend to efforts to remember and reach for a public health in an era of global health, privatization, and increasing inequality.