Life at a Distance: Medicine and Nationalism in India’s Pan-African E-Network

In Life at a Distance Vincent Duclos recounts the story of the Pan-African e-Network. Branded as a ＂India’s gift to the world,＂ and as a ＂shining example of South-South cooperation,＂ the Pan-African e-Network was an exceptionally ambitious project. Between 2009 and 2017, the network used satellite technology to connect hospitals across Africa with hospitals in India, providing medical education and delivering health care for patients, at a distance. Duclos shows how, by accelerating the flow of expertise and patients across continents, the network also created connected enclaves, at once commercial, infrastructural, and medical. Life at a Distance is the story of a project that, Duclos suggests, acted as a medium for speculation about the future: about medical markets, the nation, South-South relations, and a new world order beyond Western-centric scripts.

Vincent Duclos is Associate Professor at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His ethnographic research focuses on global capitalism, digital technology, and medicine, and the many ways they are entangled.