Podcast Summary:
New Books in African Studies – Interview with Kalle Kananoja on "Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa"
Host: Esperanza Brisuela Garcia
Guest: Dr. Kalle Kananoja
Aired: October 19, 2025
Overview
This episode explores Dr. Kalle Kananoja’s book, Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa: Medical Encounters 1500-1850. The discussion delves into the hybrid and plural medical traditions in Atlantic Africa, cross-cultural medical exchanges between Africans and Europeans, and the methodological and conceptual challenges of studying these histories. The conversation emphasizes the importance of recognizing African agency and pluralism in healing, the implications of environmental and social contexts, and the continued relevance of this scholarship.
Key Discussion Points and Insights
Dr. Kananoja’s Background and Inspirations
- Academic Path: Started in African Studies at University of Helsinki, initially focused on linguistics, then shifted to history and healing.
- Early Influences: Inspired by James Sweet’s Recreating Africa and Linda Heywood’s work, and by a mentor’s ethnography about a Tanzanian herbalist.
- Context of African History in Finland: It’s a small but passionate field, with only a handful of scholars but strong connections and supportive mentorship.
"African history is a very marginal subject in Finland ... But I was very lucky to always have good teachers, good mentors now colleagues."
— Dr. Kalle Kananoja [05:46]
The Genesis of Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa
- Motivation: Frustration at absence of Africa-focused studies of medicine within Atlantic history and a wish to rebalance narratives away from the Atlantic slave trade.
- Research Foundations: Utilized archival research, principally in Portuguese archives—particularly Inquisition records and missionary documents.
"I wanted ... the focus to remain only on the African continent ... I was writing in reaction to the developments that were taking place in the much larger fields of American and Atlantic as well as African Diaspora history ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [07:40]
Medical Pluralism and Cross-Cultural Encounters
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Evidence from Sources: Inquisition and missionary sources document Portuguese men seeking African healers, revealing regular cross-cultural rituals and exchanges in healing.
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Conceptual and Methodological Challenges: The European sources are biased, often only mentioning healers in contexts of conflict or condemnation, and rarely granting Africans their own narrative voice.
"... Healers have an almost invisible presence in this creolized or hybridized landscapes ... usually present only when there's some sort of clash of cultures."
— Dr. Kananoja [13:25] -
Classifications of Healers: Missionary typologies—e.g., Monari’s classification of healers as ‘good’, ‘wicked’, or ‘bad’—reflect European attempts to interpret African medical pluralism.
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Internal African Pluralism: Many types of healers (spirit possession specialists, herbalists, spiritualists), with competition and complementarity among them.
Shared Worldviews and "Common Ground"
- Analogous Concepts of Disease: Both Africans and early modern Europeans (especially Portuguese) practiced pluralism—employing both spiritual and botanical approaches, reflecting broader Atlantic and European patterns.
"...medical pluralism also in Portugal ... So I think it was only natural ... we also try to connect it to historiographies in other fields ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [20:41] - Balanced Cross-Cultural Encounters: The book strives to highlight not just difference, but shared frameworks and mutual pragmatism—Africans and Portuguese both experimented with each other's remedies and practices.
"There was this pragmatism about what each of them could use ... even this level of communication could not have taken place without ... all these different cultures giving a certain amount of value to this particular type of materials and knowledge."
— Esperanza Brisuela Garcia [23:52]
The Materiality of Medicine and Knowledge Networks
- Medicinal Trade: Portuguese and Africans alike relied on local and imported remedies; African botanicals were more widely used in the Americas than in Europe, due to shipping patterns and limited direct European interest in Africa.
"Africans and Europeans both had to find ways to survive somehow ... you always turn to the local ingredients, local resources."
— Dr. Kananoja [25:03] - Longstanding Medicinal Plants: Specific plants (e.g., Takula, Engaria) recur throughout centuries, indicating deep medical traditions and regional trading networks.
Expanding the Scope: Gold Coast and Sierra Leone
- Comparative Approach: Dr. Kananoja expands beyond Central Africa to incorporate the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone, addressing whether Portuguese practices differed significantly from other Europeans.
"I think that for Atlantic Africa ... our source base needs to represent the various groups that were present on the coast."
— Dr. Kananoja [34:37] - Women as Medical Brokers: African women were key intermediaries, providing care, medicines, and connecting Europeans to local healers.
- African Voices in European Sources: Despite the European perspective, careful reading allows glimpses of African agency and experimentation with European medicine.
"It's ... very interesting ... Africans were acquiring European medical techniques ... at times it seemed that Africans were more interested in experimenting with the European than the Europeans were using their own medicine."
— Dr. Kananoja [39:07]
Linguistics and Conceptual Change
- The Power of Words: Linguistic evidence helps track conceptual change—e.g., the term bunzo (homesickness/depression among enslaved Africans), its shifting use and racialization in medical discourse.
"At the root of this word is homesickness. And that, of course, is something that anyone can suffer from ... what happens [in the 1760s] ... all of a sudden it's not the white people anymore who suffer from it, but now it's only the blacks ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [49:03]
Atlantic "Medical Geography"
- Environmental Understandings: Both Africans and Portuguese had conceptions of healthy/dangerous regions (e.g., coast vs. interior), which shaped beliefs and movements for health.
"I think it's more about imagination and images that became attached to certain locations and certain regions over the centuries."
— Dr. Kananoja [54:49] - Continuities: Attitudes toward place-based health persisted into later colonial periods, and echoes survive in popular beliefs today.
Contributions and Future Directions
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Pluralism and Agency: Emphasizes that both Africans and Europeans contributed to medical knowledge and survival strategies in Africa; Africans were not merely recipients.
"... your concept of pluralism and the importance of realizing the contributions of both Europeans and Africans ... is something that yet needs ... a lot of room to think about these questions."
— Esperanza Brisuela Garcia [59:23] -
Areas for Further Research: Urges extending the story past 1850 into the colonial and postcolonial era, and continuing to integrate African voices and methodologies.
"It's really important to look what comes next ... to carry ... this research further in time ... see what happened after 1850 ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [61:07] -
Current Projects: Dr. Kananoja is working on a synthesis about demography and health in African history for a Finnish audience, and pursuing work on Finnish medical missions in Namibia.
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
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Opening Statement on Methodology
"Healers have an almost invisible presence in this creolized or hybridized landscapes of Angola ... usually present only when there's some sort of clash of cultures."
— Dr. Kalle Kananoja [13:25] -
On the Shared Frameworks
"... the basic medical plurality, you know, that African societies were medically plural societies where different kinds of healers compete. You know, they competed with each other, but also complemented each other."
— Dr. Kananoja [17:55] -
On Pragmatism and Pluralism
"The principal issue here, of course, is that Africans and Europeans both had to find ways to survive somehow ... you always turn to the local ingredients, local resources. At first, this is a matter of survival."
— Dr. Kananoja [25:03] -
On Linguistic Traces of Disease Concepts
"At the root of this word [bunzo] is homesickness. And that, of course, is something that anyone can suffer from ... the concept gets racialized, and from this time onward, medical doctors also begin to pay more attention to ponzo and similar mental ailments ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [49:03] -
On Historical Imagination and Geography
"It's more about imagination and images that became attached to certain locations ..."
— Dr. Kananoja [54:49]
Key Timestamps
- [01:51] Introduction to Dr. Kananoja & book premise
- [02:30] Dr. Kananoja’s academic journey & inspirations
- [06:32] Research genesis, archival methods, and historiographical motivations
- [12:17] Early evidence for medical hybridization in Inquisition sources
- [18:50] Medical pluralism, healer types, and disease concepts
- [20:34] Portuguese and European pluralism as comparative background
- [24:40] Mutual experimentation; medical materiality and knowledge transmission
- [32:35] Expansion to the Gold Coast and Sierra Leone; comparative findings
- [38:10] On finding African agency in scattered, biased European sources
- [46:08] The infiltration of European practices into African healing, methodological uses of linguistics
- [49:03] The case of “bunzo”—homesickness and its racialization in Atlantic medicine
- [54:26] Medical geography, the environment, and conceptualizations of health
- [60:40] Future research directions and ongoing projects
Conclusion
Healing Knowledge in Atlantic Africa brings a nuanced approach to the history of medicine in the Atlantic world by centering African agency, exposing the complex exchanges between local and European healing practices, and underscoring the dynamic pluralism of precolonial and colonial African societies. Dr. Kananoja’s work challenges narratives that overemphasize difference and colonial dominance, presenting a more balanced, interconnected, and pluralistic history of medical knowledge.