IIAS Newsletter 45 Autumn 2007

Intimate Empire: Bodily contacts in an imperial zone

Clare Anderson

<p>Anderson, Warwick. 2006.<em> Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines</em>. Durham, London: Duke University Press. 355 pages. ISBN o 8223 3843 2</p><p>Warwick Anderson&rsquo;s fascinating new book is the outcome of meticulous research into the relationship between colonisation and medical practices in America&lsquo; s administration of the Philippines, 1898 - 1930s. The author argues that as Americans sought to maintain their own corporal and psychic health during this imperial encounter, colonial medicine gradually came to represent Filipinos as a &lsquo;contaminated&rsquo; race , and so attempted to &lsquo;civilise&rsquo; and &lsquo;reform&rsquo; them through a focus on personal hygiene and social conduct. This is a history, therefore, of the development of &lsquo;biomedical citizenship (p 3).</p>