Author China Scherz will host a discussion about her book, “Higher Powers: Alcohol and After in Uganda’s Capital City,” Thursday. Credit: Courtesy of Clintonville Books
In a quiet corner of Clintonville, a rare book room is about to become a portal to the streets of Kampala.?
Thursday at 4:30 p.m., Clintonville Books will host a public discussion featuring University of Notre Dame anthropologist China Scherz as she presents her latest book, “Higher Powers: Alcohol and After in Uganda’s Capital City.”
The free-to-the-public event, located at 3286 N. High St., pairs Scherz with Ohio State historian Thomas F. McDow for a 90-minute exploration of how culture, religion and history reshape our understanding of addiction.
Clintonville Books Manager Brad Walker said the event is part of an ongoing mission to bridge the gap between rigorous academic research and the local community.
“We have been lucky to host a number of academic authors, largely thanks to Erin Moore, OSU professor of anthropology and wife of the store’s owner,” Walter said. “She also helped us book Anand Pandian, author of ‘Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down’ back in October.”
Scherz’s book, co-authored with Ugandan colleagues George Mpanga and Sarah Namirembe, whose research was supported by the National Science Foundation, highlights an interesting observation. Though global health organizations poured resources into things such as malaria and water sanitation, Scherz said alcohol use disorders in Uganda — which boasts a high per-capita consumption rate — often fell through the cracks of traditional non-governmental organization intervention.
According to Scherz, the research, an ethnographic study that began in 2015, intentionally avoids a strictly clinical “Western” perspective. Instead, she said it traces the paths of those seeking help through Pentecostal deliverance ministries, spirited mediums and local herbalists.
“The book really traces across these different spaces to ask: what are other ways of imagining what this problem is?” Scherz said. “How does that reshape the kinds of interventions that are attempted and the outcomes that people see?”
Scherz said one of the most provocative findings in “Higher Powers” is the fundamental difference in how recovery is defined. In the United States, addiction is widely viewed as a chronic, lifelong condition. However, in the Ugandan contexts Scherz studied, she said the “problem” is often seen as external.
“Herbalists, mediums, and Pentecostals conceptualize this as something that is coming from somewhere else — that this is a product of possession,” Scherz said. “They are thinking about this as something that someone can be released from permanently, that it was never them anyway.”
Scherz said this shift in perspective offers a radical form of hope.
“It opens some really different possibilities for what one’s social life might look like after [addiction], rather than this being something that is always you,” Scherz said.
Though the research is grounded in years of fieldwork, Scherz said the book was written for more than just academic purposes. She said it was crafted for undergraduates, general readers interested in substance use, and — crucially — readers within Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa.
“That’s really one of the gifts of anthropology,” Scherz said. “You get to be surprised by people. I really try to learn from them.”
The discussion on Thursday serves as a bridge for Scherz’s work as she transitions to her next project, which she said is a study of opioid and methamphetamine addiction in Central Appalachia.
Those interested in attending can RSVP on the Clintonville Books website.
