Paper short abstract:

Through a feminist approach to contemporary scholarly and policy conversations about fake drugs, my work asks questions about Tanzanian women’s access to contraceptives and how “access” is both informed & made difficult by the circulation of narratives around fake medication.

Paper long abstract:

Broadly my research aims to contribute to the emerging conversations about the apparent prevalence of counterfeit medicine in Africa. My research examines the development of narratives about fake contraceptives in Tanzania. It specifically does this by exploring Tanzanian women’s experiences with the side effects of these medications and its relationship to their social, cultural, political and economic contexts that further influence the construction of fakeness. Through four months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with four working-class women from various districts in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, my research explored women’s anxieties about using these medications, the side effects of which were believed to pose a threat to their health.

The study of the emergence of fake pharmaceuticals through a feminist lens offered invaluable insights on two important issues: (i) the social hierarchies related to gender, race, sex, and class, and how these relationships mediate an individual’s power, agency, and choice relating to their health; and (ii) the lack of consensus in defining what constitutes something as falsified, counterfeit, or fake has given room for various forms of meaning and understanding. Overall, this ethnography has expanded on what we know about the emergence of fake pharmaceuticals, the conceptualization of fakeness, and how it is understood and constructed.