Producing Ebola: Creating Knowledge In and About an Epidemic

Bolten, Catherine E.; Shepler, Susan

doi:10.1353/anq.2017.0022

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…These explanations focused on how a lack of understanding or unwillingness to comply with public health regulations were hindering efforts to end Ebola. Various critics pointed to the fallacies of these interpretations (Abramowitz et al, 2015a(Abramowitz et al, , 2015bBolten and Shepler, 2017;Chandler et al, 2015;Jones, 2011;Richards, 2016;Wilkinson and Leach, 2015;Wilkinson et al, 2017). Indeed, 'behavioural and culturalist' interpretations that individualize, depoliticize and cast blame are not new to Ebola, and have been defined as 'as ineffective as they are unjust' in widely different contexts (Fassin, 2007: xix).…”

Section: 'Sensitization': the Logic Of Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

Enria¹

2019

Development and Change

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This article explores how framings of the 2014–16 outbreak of Ebola as a crisis, its causes, nature and consequences gave rise to two seemingly contradictory types of interventions within affected communities in Sierra Leone: a militarized state of emergency on the one hand, and efforts to foster local engagement and ownership on the other. Teasing out explicitly the underlying logic of these two modes of response, we are able to discern the convergence between containment and engagement approaches that are at the heart of contemporary humanitarianism. Rather than being opposed or contradictory, the article shows how they were mutually constitutive, through negotiations between different ways of knowing and responding to the Ebola crisis. The resulting divisive practices, juxtaposing ‘Ebola heroes’ and ‘dangerous bodies’, re‐ordered the landscapes that individuals had to navigate in order to manage uncertainty. Tracing these logics through to the ‘subjects’ of intervention, the article tells the story of one traditional healer's ‘epistemic navigations’ in his efforts to survive both the epidemic and its response. Bringing these dynamics and their consequences to the fore in the Sierra Leonean case invites broader reflections on a humanitarian assemblage increasingly reliant on the mutual constitution of containment and engagement, security and resilience, in its approach to managing ‘at risk’ populations.

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Section: 'Sensitization': the Logic Of Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

Enria¹

2019

Development and Change

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“…Ebola fear was no sure path to protection for Thoronka: it was a highly risky argument to advance in partly because knowledge about the disease and its effects was expanding swiftly (Bolten and Shepler 2017;Abramowitz 2017). UKHO officials scrutinized Thoronka's claims against regular streams of new information emanating from Sierra Leonebased British embassy staff and Department for International Development personnel.…”

Section: Illness Fear and The Performance Of Exceptional Protectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stories of Ebola-affected communities were translated globally (Biruk 2014). US citizens traveling abroad to and from Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone were subject to graphic visual warnings; "near panic" (Bolten and Shepler 2017) reigned. Fear of Ebola, aided and abetted by news media, quickly entered an institutionalization phase, whereby hallowed agencies offered tailored expert warnings and guidance.…”

Section: Performing Ebola Fear: Three Case Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Unprecedented or unusual claims are subject to additional scrutiny and they provoke enquiries from RSD officers or tribunal judges to COI directorates. Knowledge about Ebola expanded rapidly during the epidemic (Abramowitz 2017;Bolten and Shepler 2017;Goguen and Bolten 2017). PHEIC-like crises spark urgent data collection, perhaps contributing to uneven and differing claim assessments.…”

Section: Coi and Ebolamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ebola’s Would-be Refugees: Performing Fear and Navigating Asylum During a Public Health Emergency

Lawrance

2018

Medical Anthropology

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Chronic and acute illnesses sit uncomfortably with asylum claiming and refugee mobilities. The story of a Sierra Leonean, an athlete who feared Ebola and sought refuge in the UK, provides an opening to examine protection discourses that invoke fear, trauma, and crisis metaphors, to understand how asylum claims are performed, and how related petitions are adjudicated during public health emergencies of international concern. Ebola is revealed as a novel claim strategy, and thus a useful subject matter to investigate the shifting modalities of migrant agency, the unstable fabric of medical humanitarianism, and knowledge production in moments of exceptionality.

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“…Between the fast and the slow, an ethic of relational intimacy, care, and attention permeates much of the writing that cultural anthropologists produce. A special collection in Anthropological Quarterly on “Producing Ebola: Creating Knowledge In and About an Epidemic” is exemplary of this dynamic (Benton ; Bolten and Shepler ; Goguen and Bolten ; Martineau, Wilkinson, and Parker ; Moran ; Shepler ; Wilkinson ) . Faced with inadequate, underinformed policy responses to a public health crisis that was devastating much of West Africa, multiple groups of anthropologists with the regional expertise and emotional commitments borne of the long‐term intimacies of years of fieldwork convened in person and virtually to produce knowledge otherwise, in the hope of informing or enacting better policy and humanitarian responses (Bolten and Shepler ).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

Tamarkin

2018

American Anthropologist

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This essay reviews work produced in predominantly US cultural anthropology publications throughout 2017. It asks: What makes an anthropological inquiry timely, what sorts of relationalities command anthropological attention, and to what end? Noting our ongoing methodological commitment to long-term ethnography alongside increasingly important online forums for reaching broader publics and responding quickly to emerging issues, it expands the range of work surveyed to include some online-only short essays alongside the larger collection of traditionally published research articles. Characterized by empathic inquiry, frequently drawing on years of ethnographic and personal experience with the places, people, and other entities that we write about, and often attentive to histories at multiple scales, cultural anthropology of this moment, however published, grapples with dark times while it also offers ways of imagining other, better futures and ways of being in relation to others. Two thematic clusters organize this essay: the first considers temporality alongside mobility and sovereignty, and the second considers relationality alongside subjectivity and mediation. Together, all of these concerns-that are both of the moment and long standing-build a varied body of work that grapples with the interrelationalities that constitute power, place, and possibility. I argue that what makes an anthropological inquiry timely is the extent to which it is relationally informed and attuned to care for worlds that we inhabit and imagine, together. [year in review, sociocultural anthropology, temporality, mobility, sovereignty, relationality, subjectivity, mediation] RESUMEN Este ensayo revisa el trabajo producido en publicaciones de antropología cultural predominantemente estadounidenses durante 2017. Pregunta: ¿Qué hace la investigación antropológica oportuna, y qué tipos de relacionalidades comandan la atención antropológica, y con qué fin? Notando nuestro compromiso metodológico continuo con una etnografía de largo plazo junto a foros en línea cada vez más importantes para llegar a públicos más amplios y respondiendo rápidamente a cuestiones emergentes, expande el rango del trabajo evaluado para incluir algunos ensayos cortos sólo en línea junto a la mayor colección de artículos de investigación publicados tradicionalmente. Caracterizada por una investigación empática, frecuentemente extrayendo de años de experiencia etnográfica y personal con los lugares, la gente, y otras entidades sobre las que escribimos, y a menudo atentos a historias a escalas múltiples, la antropología cultural de este momento, independientemente de cómo sea publicada, lucha contra tiempos oscuros mientras ofrece maneras de imaginar otros, mejores futuros y formas de estar en relación con otros. Dos grupos temáticos organizan este ensayo: el primero considera temporalidad junto a movilidad y soberanía, y el segundo considera relacionalidad junto a subjetividad y mediación. Juntas, todas estas preocupaciones-que son tanto del momento como de larga d...

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Producing Ebola: Creating Knowledge In and About an Epidemic

Cited by 13 publications

References 11 publications

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

The Ebola Crisis in Sierra Leone: Mediating Containment and Engagement in Humanitarian Emergencies

Ebola’s Would-be Refugees: Performing Fear and Navigating Asylum During a Public Health Emergency

Time and Relational Possibility: Cultural Anthropology in 2017

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