ABSTRACT
Epidemics are moments of both biological and social crisis that, in the case of zoonoses, occur when the species barrier is breached. Microbial genomes archive these breaches, as well as subsequent shifts in human–human transmission. Molecular epidemiology thus offers a powerful tool for examining questions around epidemic origin and spread, but requires triangulation with ethnographic and historical sources to understand context. In the case of acute outbreaks, field ethnography reveals political and social fault-lines relevant not only to understanding drivers of infection but the conflicting logics of responses to epidemics – and how political economies of science constrain what can be known about epidemics. Drawing on clinical practice and research in HIV and in the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the chapter examines how dialogues between ethnography and molecular epidemiology reveal infrastructures of connectivity and interlinkage of organisms and things. These biosocial infrastructures are trading zones or sites of intensified and accelerated biological exchange and social transformation. Specific examples discussed include the hunt for the origins of HIV and how HIV sciences can illuminate the structure of sexual networks, possible causes for the West African Ebola epidemic and the political logic of suspicion that greeted it, and the challenges of doing clinical trials in the context of the Ebola emergency. Epidemics provide unique opportunities for bringing into conversation field and laboratory studies and contribute to advancing understanding of what constitutes the human today. Anthropology remains a field science in which ethnography is the primary method. As this volume shows, one can distinguish between an anthropology in epidemics, understood as the use of ethnographic studies in the field, where epidemics happen, to identify and address causes of outbreaks and ongoing transmission, from an anthropology of epidemics, which seeks to shed light on issues of more theoretical significance to our understanding of the ‘human’ as both a biological and social being.
