Présentation de l’ouvrage « The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam »

Ce livre vient d’être primé par la European Association for the History and Health (Biennal Book Award 2021). 

La Section des Études vietnamiennes est heureuse de recevoir Laurence Monnais, Professeure d’Histoire à l’Université de Montréal, à l’occasion de la récente publication de son ouvrage The Colonial Life of Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and Modernity in Vietnam aux Cambridge University Press (2019).

Situated at the crossroads between the history of colonialism, of modern Southeast Asia, and of medical pluralism, this history of medicine and health traces the life of pharmaceuticals in Vietnam under French rule. Laurence Monnais examines the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, looking at both circulation and consumption, considering access to drugs and the existence of multiple therapeutic options in a colonial context. She argues that colonialism was crucial to the worldwide diffusion of modern medicines and speaks to contemporary concerns regarding over-reliance on pharmaceuticals, drug toxicity, self-medication, and the accessibility of effective medicines. Retracing the steps by which pharmaceuticals were produced and distributed, readers meet the many players in the process, from colonial doctors to private pharmacists, from consumers to various drug traders and healers. Yet this is not primarily a history of medicines as objects of colonial science, but rather a history of medicines as tools of social change.

Elle présentera son travail et les coulisses de l’écriture de son livre le jeudi 2 décembre 2021, de 17h à 18h30, dans la salle du conseil, 481 C (Bât. Grands Moulins) de l’Université Paris Cité.

La présentation aura lieu en français.

Séminaire d’actualité scientifique ouvert à toutes et tous.

Pour toute information complémentaire : marie.gibert@u-paris.fr