Main description:

Over the past decades, infectious disease epidemics have come to increasingly pose major global health challenges to humanity. The Anthropology of Epidemics approaches epidemics as total social phenomena: processes and events which encompass and exercise a transformational impact on social life whilst at the same time functioning as catalysts of shifts and ruptures as regards human/non-human relations. Bearing a particular mark on subject areas and questions which have recently come to shape developments in anthropological thinking, the volume brings epidemics to the forefront of anthropological debate, as an exemplary arena for social scientific study and analysis.

Contents:

Introduction: The Anthropology of Epidemics 1. Simulations of Epidemics: Techniques of Global Health and Neo-Liberal Government 2. Great Anticipations 3. What is an Epidemic Emergency? 4. Migrant Birds or Migrant Labour? Money, Mobility and the Emergence of Poultry Epidemics in Vietnam 5. Photography, Zoonosis and Epistemic Suspension after the End of Epidemics 6. The Multispecies Infrastructure of Zoonosis 7. Complexity, Anthropology and Epidemics 8. Pandemic Publics: How Epidemics Transform Social and Political Collectives of Public Health 9. Of What Are Epidemics the Symptom? Speed, Interlinkage and Infrastructure in Molecular Anthropology