Introduction : the anthropology of epidemics
Abstract
Epidemic and pandemic threats contour our contemporary political rationalities and social realities. Anthropologists have a complicated history with the study of epidemics and their control. Episodic and exceptional in nature, epidemics are a real-time crisis that compels immediate response. The outbreak of HIV/AIDS shifted and amplified the dimensions of anthropological engagement with epidemics. Growing historical and anthropological interest in the way epidemics are visualised has led to studies that go beyond the usual illustrative or representational focus on epidemic images. Seen as a process that contributes but also challenges epistemological and political aspects of epidemics, visualisation is thus becoming a new terrain of medical anthropological research. This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the book. The book presents three thematic threads: the study of zoonotic disease or interspecies transmission of pathogens, the infrastructural and material aspects of epidemics, and counter-epidemic intervention.
Citation
Keck , F , Kelly , A H & Lynteris , C 2019 , Introduction : the anthropology of epidemics . in A H Kelly , F Keck & C Lynteris (eds) , The anthropology of epidemics . Routledge studies in health and medical anthropology , Routledge Taylor & Francis Group , Abingdon, Oxon , pp. 1-24 . https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429461897-1
Publication
The anthropology of epidemics
Status
Peer reviewed
Type
Book item
Description
Funding: Research by Christos Lynteris leading to this chapter was funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme/ERC grant agreement no 336564 for the project Visual Representations of the Third Plague Pandemic (University of St Andrews). Ann H. Kelly’s contribution was supported by the U.K. Economic and Social Research Council Urgency Research Grant Scheme (grant no. ES/M009203/1).Collections
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