Sociological Imperialism and Medical Extroversion: Provisional Inflexion on Covid-19 Response and the Praxis of Medical Imperialism in Postcolonial Societies

Abstract

This paper engages medical practice as a human rational response to ill-health that is not generic to all human society albeit in different practices and forms. It examines how the COVID-19 pandemic and response reveal global dynamics in medical research and knowledge production – itself a product of imperial logic. This paper invites a critical re-reading of the COVID-19 pandemic and response to a context of Western-centric or hegemonic (re)production of coloniality in general and extroversion of disciplinary practices in particular by laying out some preliminary basis for interrogation. In particular, this paper attempts to highlight how the association of superiority to (Western) academy is redacted in (medical) practice and manifests as the tension between cultural/local and ‘scientific’/global knowledge systems. Through decolonial reflection on literature related to the COVID-19 pandemic, epistemological concerns and imperialism, it argues that Western medical praxis embodies and articulates ingrained cultural assumptions and biases against non-Western medicinal skills and practices.