Good, Charles M.

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Good, Charles M.

(Charles M. Good, Jr.)

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Chicago, M.A, Ph.D., 1970.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Virginia Tech, 115 Major Williams Hall, Mail Code 0115, Blacksburg, VA 24061. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, geographer, and educator. Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, professor emeritus.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Arts and Sciences Millennium Grant, 2000.

WRITINGS:

The Parables of Jesus, Christopher Publishing House (Boston, MA), 1961.

Dimensions of East African Cultures, Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI), 1966.

Rural Markets and Trade in East Africa: A Study of the Functions and Development of Exchange Institutions in Ankole, Uganda, University of Chicago, Department of Geography (Chicago, IL), 1970.

Market Development in Traditionally Marketless Societies: A Perspective on East Africa, Ohio University Center for International Studies (Athens, OH), 1971.

Ethnomedical Systems in Africa: Patterns of Traditional Medicine in Rural and Urban Kenya, Guilford Press (New York, NY), 1987.

The Community in African Primary Health Care: Strengthening Participation and a Proposed Strategy, E. Mellen Press (Lewiston, NY), 1988.

The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2004.

Contributor to books, including Traditional Health Care Delivery in Contemporary Africa, edited by Priscilla R. Ulin and Marshall H. Segall, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse, NY), 1980; Alternative Therapies: Expanding Options in Health Care, edited by R. Gordon et al, Springer (New York, NY), 1998; and Cultural Encounters with the Environment, edited by A. Murphy and D. Johnson, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and geographer Charles M. Good is a retired educator with the honorary position of professor emeritus at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. As a researcher, he studied areas such as medical and health geography, health concerns of refugees and immigrants, ethnomedical systems, as well as community-based systems designed to reduce sexually transmitted diseases, HIV infection, and AIDS, noted a biographer on the Virginia Tech Geography Department Web site. Good also specializes in health and geography issues in Africa.

In The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier, Good presents a "remarkable study of the medical agenda and activities of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) along the shores of Lake Malawi and its hinterland" from the mid-1880s to 1964, when Malawi gained independence, remarked Giacomo Macola in the Journal of African History. The Anglo-Catholic UMCA maintained a strong and consistent presence in Africa's Lake Malawi region for nearly one hundred years. Their activities there consisted of both missionary work and medical aid and treatment for the impoverished villagers in the area. Good's volume provides an in-depth exploration of the UMCA's medical activities along Lake Malawi. With it, he presents a history of the UMCA's unique method of dispersing its message and aid along the lakeshores. "What makes this story so interesting is the focus of the mission for most of its existence on the use of two steamers, built in Britain, that logged thousands of miles plying the often stormy waters of one of Africa's Great Rift Valley lakes to aid in carrying out evangelistic and medical tasks," commented Wil Gesler in the Geographical Review.

Good focuses his historical reporting on the Anglicans' works in connection with two major steamers, the Chauncy Maples and the Charles Janson. Thereafter, he "patiently and meticulously documents the evolution of three interrelated phenomena: 1) the lives of an amazingly resilient African people; 2) the nearly incomprehensible strides made by a handful of missionary heroes; and 3) the neglect on the part of British colonial administration," commented Robert Stevenson and Ken Mufuka, writing in the Historian. Good also stresses the contributions of a number of significant participants, including "one of the most remarkable of missionaries, W.P. Johnson—lame, sickly, inarticulate, devoted, dogged, and saintly," stated Terence Ranger in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. Throughout the volume, Good "praises individuals for their unstinting dedication to the people they served and finds that the nurses, dispensers, and doctors who treated the sick were deeply committed to compassionate, humanitarian ideals and treating the whole person," Gesler observed. Good "usefully discusses health conditions and disease patterns in the lakeside region and gives a detailed account of the medical services made available by the mission and of its limited collaboration with the colonial government," noted reviewer John McCracken, writing in Africa. Good also illustrates the type and extent of medical treatment provided by the UMCA toward the end of its activities in the 1960s, "emphasizing that the overall impact was, at best, very limited," McCracken stated. Though the UMCA's efforts were in most ways "heroic," Ranger commented, the need they confronted was simply too vast—their medical efforts, Ranger concluded, were "ultimately futile."

"Competently written and well-illustrated," The Steamer Parish "provides a level-headed account of mission activities that successfully avoids both undue adulation and unthinking criticism. It also evinces a sometimes quirky but always endearing enthusiasm for its subject," commented McCracken. Good's book "makes an important contribution to our understanding of the origins of the contemporary crisis of public health care systems in Central Africa," Macola concluded. In assessing the work's importance, Gesler remarked, "What makes the book such an important, as well as unique, contribution is its combination of medical and health geography to provide a rounded picture of issues that go far beyond a particular time and place." Stevenson and Mufuka called the book a "significant, comprehensive, and authoritative case study" of the UMCA's mission and history, and concluded that the work stands as "a goldmine for research scholars."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Africa, spring, 2005, John McCracken, review of The Steamer Parish: The Rise and Fall of Missionary Medicine on an African Frontier, p. 243.

African Studies Review, April, 1990, Robert G. Carlson, review of Ethnomedical Systems in Africa: Patterns of Traditional Medicine in Rural and Urban Kenya, p. 164.

American Anthropologist, September, 1988, review of Ethnomedical Systems in Africa, p. 713.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, December, 1988, R. Mansell Prothero, review of Ethnomedical Systems in Africa, p. 743.

Geographical Review, January, 1989, Wilbert M. Gesler, review of Ethnomedical Systems in Africa, p. 128; October, 2006, Wil Gesler, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 725.

Historian, winter, 2005, Robert Stevenson and Ken Mufuka, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 742.

International Bulletin of Missionary Research, October, 2004, Terence Ranger, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 188.

International History Review, September, 2005, Roy MacLeod, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 623.

International Journal of African Historical Studies, summer, 2004, Stacey Langwick, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 575.

Journal of African History, July, 2005, Giacomo Macola, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 376.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, winter, 2007, Robert I. Rotberg, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 501.

Journal of Religion, January, 2006, Michael W. Tuck, review of The Steamer Parish, p. 119.

SciTech Book News, July, 1987, review of Ethnomedical Systems in Africa, p. 2