RAISR4D Violence

Modalities of Enfleshment: Albinism and the Limits of Biosociality in Tanzania

01/06/2026

AI Summary

Media and humanitarian narratives in Tanzania create biosocial relatedness and public recognition for people with albinism, yet such identity remains unstable and contested.
Modalities of enfleshment concept emphasises how albinism is lived through shifting interpretations and embodied experiences across relationships and everyday life.
Albinism illustrates continual revaluation of bodymind differences by biomedical, disability, socio-cultural, economic, political and institutional domains and practices.

Med Anthropol. 2026 Jun 1:1-15. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2026.2679588. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Media and humanitarian discourses surrounding violence against people with albinism in Tanzania have fostered forms of biosocial relatedness and public recognition. Yet albinism does not consistently consolidate into a stable biosocial identity. Drawing on ethnographic research with Farida, Baraka and other interlocutors with albinism, this article ethnographically develops the concept of “modalities of enfleshment” to attend to how albinism is lived through shifting interpretations and embodied experiences. In this paper, I argue that the condition offers a case study for understanding how bodymind differences are continually revalued across and shaped by biomedical, disability, socio-cultural, economic, political, and institutional domains and practices.

PMID:42220065 | DOI:10.1080/01459740.2026.2679588

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