Vinay Kamat

  • Associate Professor
  • vinay.kamat(at)ubc.ca
  • (604) 822-4802 (AnSo 2319)
  • Ph.D. Emory University, Atlanta, 2004
  • MA University of Arizona, Tucson,1994
  • Ph.D. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Bombay, India), 1992



Vinay Kamat is a medical anthropologist with specialization in global health. He has conducted fieldwork in India and Tanzania. His research interests revolve around issues of health, illness and healing that affect the everyday lives of ordinary people. Dr. Kamat's previous ethnographic research in India has addressed a broad range of health issues, including the cultural politics of primary health care, the problematic of self-medication with pharmaceuticals, and historical-cultural aspects of malaria resurgence in urban areas. His ethnographic research in Tanzania has focused on the everyday lived experience of marginalized people who are caught in a process of rapid social transformation engendered through structural adjustment programs.

Dr. Kamat's current research in the East African context concerns the discourse surrounding the introduction of artimisinine-based combination drug therapy (ACT) to replace chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine in the treatment of childhood malaria. He is conducting a three year SSHRC-funded study on how and why some of the radical shifts in malaria control strategies have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa in the last few years, and what these changes mean for those who are most severely affected by malaria. Dr. Kamat also retains his long-term interest in the pharmaceutical scenario in India. He is conducting an interdisciplinary collaborative study on the political economy of the outsourcing of clinical drug trials to India. This study is funded by a grant from the Hampton Research Fund (2005-2007) and The Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research (2008-2009).


Research and Teaching Interests

Medical Anthropology, Ethnomedicine, Anthropology and Global Health, Anthropology of Emerging and Reemerging Infectious Diseases, Malaria, Political Ecology of Health, Cultures of Africa, Cultures of South Asia.

Current Research Projects

  • 2011-2012 Peripheral Subjects: Politics of Food, Hunger and Malnutrition among Residents of the Mnazi Bay-Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park (Humanities and Social Sciences).
  • 2008-2010 Structural Violence, Social Suffering and Everyday Survival Strategies of Single Mothers in Post-Socialist Tanzania. (Martha Piper Research Fund).
  • 2008-2009 Outsourcing of Clinical Drug Trials to India and the Problem of Therapeutic Misconception. (Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research).
  • 2006-2009 Global Discourses on Malaria Control and their Impact on Local Communities in Tanzania. (Social Science and Humanities Research Council).
  • 2005-2007 Fast, Cheap and Out of Control? The Political Economy of the Outsourcing of Clinical Drug Trials to India. (Hampton Research Fund).

 

Publications (Refereed)

  • Kamat, V.R. and Nyato, D. (2010) Soft targets or partners in health? Retail pharmacies and their role in Tanzania’s malaria control program. Social Science and Medicine 71(3):626-633.
  • Kamat, V.R. and Nyato, D. (2010) Community response to artemisinin-based combination therapy for childhood malaria: A case study from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Malaria Journal 9:61.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2009) Cultural interpretations of the efficacy and side effects of antimalarials in Tanzania. Anthropology and Medicine 16(3):293-305.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2008) Dying under the bird's shadow: Representations of degedege and child survival among the Zaramo of Tanzania. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 22(1): 67-93.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2008) Reconsidering the allure of the culturally distant in therapy seeking: A case study from coastal Tanzania. Medical Anthropology 27(2):106-135.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2008) This is not our culture! Discourse of nostalgia and narratives of health concerns in post-socialist Tanzania. Africa 73(3):359-383.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2006) "I thought it was only ordinary fever!": Cultural knowledge and the micropolitics of childhood febrile illness in Tanzania. Social Science and Medicine 62(12):2945-2959.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2001) Private practitioners and their role in the resurgence of malaria in Mumbai (Bombay) and Navi Mumbai (New Bombay): serving the affected or aiding an epidemic? Social Science and Medicine 52(6):885-909.
  • Kamat, V.R. (2000) Resurgence of malaria in Bombay (Mumbai) in the 1990s: a historical perspective. Parassitologia 42(1-2):135-148.
  • Kamat, V.R. and Nichter, M. (1998) Pharmacies, self-medication and pharmaceutical marketing in Bombay, India. Social Science and Medicine 47(6):779-794.
  • Kamat, V.R. (1995) Reconsidering the popularity of primary health centers in India: a case study from rural Maharashtra, India. Social Science and Medicine 41(1):87-98.

Book Chapters

  • Kamat, V.R. (2009) Anthropology of childhood malaria in Tanzania. (First Chapter) In. Robert Hahn and Marcia Inhorn (eds) 2nd edition. Anthropology in Public Health. Bridging Differences in Culture and Society. Pp. 3-32. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Kamat, V.R. and Nichter, M. (1997) Monitoring product movement: an Ethnographic study of pharmaceutical sales representatives in Bombay, India. In. Sara Bennett, Barbara McPhake and Anne Mills (eds). Private Health Providers in Developing Countries: Serving the Public Interest? Pp.121-140. London: Zed Press.

Awards and Fellowships

  • Wenner-Gren Richard Carley Hunt Fellow (July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012).
  • Best Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2010-2011. Anthropology Students Association, UBC.
  • Best Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2009-2010. Anthropology Students Association, UBC.
  • Outstanding Teaching Award for 2005. Anthropology and Sociology Undergraduate Society for excellence in undergraduate teaching and learning.
  • Early Career Scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (UBC) -- Appointment September 1, 2005 to August 31, 2006.
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