In their article, “The Anthropology of Infectious Disease,” Inhorn and Brown (1990, p. 90) lay out a succinct truth: “Infectious disease problems are both biological and cultural, historical and contemporary, theoretical and practical.” Infectious agents with the potential for parasitism are ubiquitous and have complex evolutionary and behavioural relationships with humans. Inhorn and Brown state a convincing case for eliding subdisciplinary anthropological boundaries and considering infectious disease using all available theoretical (e.g., ecological, ethnomedical) and practical (e.g., evolutionary adaptations, behavioural interventions) tools available. Four-field anthropological studies incorporate investigations of linguistic, cultural, artifactual, and embodied evidence. Infectious disease, therefore, can be examined anthropologically through lenses as varied as word choices, (ethno)medical interventions, autoethnographic reflections, architectural choices, mandated and/or elective behaviour, and skeletal lesions.
Medical anthropologists and bioarchaeologists, in particular, have taken up the challenge of exploring human interactions with infectious diseases, exploring topics as varied as vaccine hesitancy and acceptance (Larsen et al., 2022), syndemic clustering and interactions of co-occurring diseases (Singer et al., 2017), and the ongoing relationship of humans with the bubonic plague (Lynteris, 2021; de Witte, 2018). While humans may feel extreme emotions about the effects of pathogens, Ed Yong (2016) reminds us that “microbes have no morals.” It may be tempting to anthropomorphize these agents of disease, and draw upon familiar metaphors to understand the ‘war’ we wage with the (in)visible foe (following Sontag, 1978, 1989); however, the parasitic goals of replication and bodily colonization do not align with such human emoting. Smallpox did not elect to scar its survivors purposefully as revenge. SARS-CoV-2 does not care if you are tired of wearing an N95. Human behaviour continues to drive human exposure to infectious agents, making an anthropology of infectious disease a particularly powerful and holistic means of thinking with and about disease.
In the winter semester of 2023, I asked students in my Anthropology of Infectious Disease graduate seminar to prepare public-facing pieces in addition to their formal research papers. Their thinking, which ricocheted about the seminar room each week, glancing off turns of phrase or a well-placed statistic with dazzling speed, demanded a broader audience. Though the current pandemic was not explicitly part of the assignment, I was not surprised when the first drafts rolled in, each engaging with COVID-19. Despite cheery declarations from various agencies regarding a “post-COVID” reality, the harsh truth is clear, we remain peri-COVID. The ‘new normal’ remains an uncomfortable relationship between humans and the ‘Other,’ in this case SARS-CoV-2. During our semester together, our class tackled concepts of risk and contagion, zombies and the ‘epidemic corpse,’ structural violence, sanitary citizenship, vaccines, stigma, bioethics, memory, and more. These discussions elicited passionate responses – anger, surprise, elation – as we grappled with questions of our own privilege and positionality in reference to infectious disease through time.
The works included in this special issue reflect the diversity of interests and experience present in the seminar as the authors explore zoonoses and stigma, eugenics during pandemics, shifting perceptions of risk during war, the anthropological conceptualization of ‘health,’ and a personal exploration of place and perception during the early days of COVID-19. Dominick Roussel and Ellen Pacheco comment on shifting stigmas surrounding the transmission of disease from animals to humans and how our domestic relationships with some animals (i.e., cats) spare them from the same revulsion we save for rats. Erica Fowler and Liam Ryan tackle the painful history of eugenics, revealing how little has changed surrounding the language of ‘fitness’ in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and how biocapitalism plays a role in access to care. Alexandra Bernyck and Hannah Whitelaw follow this powerful contribution with a shattering piece regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine following the emergence of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, outlining how priorities shifted in early 2022 and how these events relate to the cultural understanding of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Adrianna Wiley and Grace Gregory-Alcock provide a spirited refresher on the ways in which anthropology as a field can contribute to discussions of health and, finally, Juliana Upchurch contributes a deeply personal analysis of her experience in the American South during the early pandemic period, upending and complicating discussions of vaccine hesitancy in the region.
Following Inhorn and Brown’s framework for thinking about infectious diseases anthropologically, how might we grapple with the unfolding biological research on the effects of COVID-19 in the face of social denial of its presence? How can the history of infectious disease help us navigate the present (let alone inevitable future pandemics)? What theoretical paradigms and practical steps are available to the public/governments/global agencies? And how do we fit ideas of risk into all of this? The following pieces represent a glimpse of the lightning-in-a-bottle energy that characterized our conversations during our semester together. I am hopeful that these works spark some inspiration and self-reflection in their broader readership as we collectively continue to navigate our current pandemic reality outside the classroom.
Works Cited
DeWitte, Sharon N. “Stress, Sex, and Plague: Patterns of Developmental Stress and Survival in Pre- and Post-Black Death London.” American Journal of Human Biology, vol. 30, 2018, e23073.
Inhorn, Marcia C., & Peter J. Brown. “The Anthropology of Infectious Disease.” Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 19, 1990, pp. 89-117.
Larsen, Heidi J. et al. “The Vaccine-Hesitant Moment.” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 387, 2022, pp. 58-65.
Lynteris, Christos (Ed.) Plague Image and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Singer, Merrill et al. “Syndemics and the Biosocial Conception of Health.” The Lancet, vol. 389, no. 10072, 2017, pp. 941-950.
Sontag, Susan. Illness as Metaphor. McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., 1978.
Sontag, Susan. AIDS and Its Metaphors. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989.
Yong, Ed. “Microbes Have No Morals.” Aeon, https://aeon.co/essays/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-good-or-a-bad-microbe. Accessed 27 Dec 2023.
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