Julie Livingston, Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic

Mulemi, Benson A.

doi:10.1093/shm/hkt064

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The differences in available investigative scaffolding can in part be explained by targeted foreign investment in NEID control in Africa from the 1990s onwards, borne from fears of pandemic‐prone zoonoses emerging from African wildlife and compounding the infrastructural legacies of colonial power's prioritization of infectious disease control in the region (Calkins, 2021; Crane, 2013; King, 2002; Livingston, 2012; Tousignant, 2013). This suggests that the potential for different hypotheses to be advanced in investigations is at least in part determined by historical as well as contemporary interests, which in the case of public health emergencies in West Africa includes longstanding foreign ones.…”

Section: The Organizational Features Of the Outbreak Investigation An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The need to empirically scrutinize the assumed unfolding and orientation of these ostensibly immutable and effective processes is reenforced by STS and anthropological scholarship on the in many ways analogous processes of clinical diagnosis. These accounts, rather than showing clinical diagnosis taking the often‐assumed form of a stepwise process directed at correctly categorizing an illness for the purposes of subsequently treating it, reveal piecemeal processes, often focused on finding direction or closure rather than identifying a definitive causative agent or condition (Chandler et al., 2008; Jephcott et al., 2017; Livingston, 2012; Street, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ineffective responses to unlikely outbreaks: Hypothesis building in newly‐emerging infectious disease outbreaks

Jephcott,

Wood,

Cunningham

et al. 2023

Med Anthropol Q

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Over the last 30 years, there has been significant investment in research and infrastructure aimed at mitigating the threat of newly emerging infectious diseases (NEID). Core epidemiological processes, such as outbreak investigations, however, have received little attention and have proceeded largely unchecked and unimproved. Using ethnographic material from an investigation into a cryptic encephalitis outbreak in the Brong‐Ahafo Region of Ghana in 2010–2013, in this paper we trace processes of hypothesis building and their relationship to the organizational structures of the response. We demonstrate how commonly recurring features of NEID investigations produce selective pressures in hypothesis building that favor iterations of pre‐existing “exciting” hypotheses and inhibit the pursuit of alternative hypotheses, regardless of relative likelihood. These findings contribute to the growing anthropological and science and technology studies (STS) literature on the epistemic communities that coalesce around suspected NEID outbreaks and highlight an urgent need for greater scrutiny of core epidemiological processes.

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Section: The Organizational Features Of the Outbreak Investigation An...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ineffective responses to unlikely outbreaks: Hypothesis building in newly‐emerging infectious disease outbreaks

Jephcott,

Wood,

Cunningham

et al. 2023

Med Anthropol Q

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the face of suffering, the effortful work of silence may also help sustain precarious social relations. For some, silence may be the most virtuous-yet incredibly effortful-way of enduring pain and loss (see, for example, Buch Segal 2016;Livingston 2012;Smørholm 2016). Even where narrative utterances like 'you endure' help to constitute enduring pain as virtuous, people may remain silent about some experiences simply because they are impossible to put into words (Throop 2010).…”

Section: Feminist Traditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%