Sociocultural, behavioural and political factors shaping the COVID-19 pandemic: the need for a biocultural approach to understanding pandemics and (re)emerging pathogens

Abstract

Although there has been increasing focus in recent years on interdisciplinary approaches to health and disease, and in particular the dimension of social inequalities in epidemics, infectious diseases have been much less focused on. This is especially true in the area of cultural dynamics and their effects on pathogen behaviours, although there is evidence to suggest that this relationship is central to shaping our interactions with infectious disease agents on a variety of levels. This paper makes a case for a biocultural approach to pandemics such as COVID-19. It then uses this biocultural framework to examine the anthropogenic dynamics that influenced and continue to shape the COVID-19 pandemic, both during its initial phase and during critical intersections of the pandemic. Through this understanding of biocultural interactions between people, animals and pathogens, a broader societal and political dimension is drawn as a function of population level and international cultures, to reflect on the culturally mediated differential burden of the pandemic. Ultimately, it is argued that a biocultural perspective on infectious disease pandemics will allow for critical reflection on how culture shapes our behaviours at all levels, and how the effects of these behaviours are ultimately foundational to pathogen ecology and evolution.

Behaviour adoption approaches during public health emergencies: implications for the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

“…The feasibility and magnitude of success in implementing any behaviour adoption approaches are likely to be influenced by underlying cultural and sociopolitical predispositions that vary across place and time. [60][61][62][63][64] Relatedly, there are ongoing debates regarding the differences in the ability of authoritarian versus democratic governments in implementing top-down mitigation measures in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. [65][66][67] The collective evidence suggests that behavioural interventions aiming to curb infection transmission during health emergencies, including in the COVID-19 pandemic, need to take into account the complex cultural and sociopolitical factors that influence behavioural uptake.…”

Community-Level Experiences, Understandings, and Responses to COVID-19 in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review of Qualitative and Ethnographic Studies

“…Vulnerabilities affecting many nations' pandemic response center on the confluence of limited human, commodity, and financial resources, the historical contexts influencing the management and dissemination of reliable, competent data and information, and each government's engagement with its citizens [10,11]. As SARS-CoV-2 spread throughout low-and middle-income countries of the Global South (LMICs, defined by the World Bank and OECD as having a GNI per capita of USD 1046-4095 (https://datatopics.worldbank.…”

Scope of Media Advocacy During Covid-19: A Selected Case Study in Kolkata

“…In this process, media advocacy supports personal experience or even interpersonal communication among the different stratum of the public in society. The multifaceted conceptions regarding the Covid-19 pandemic have shifted the focus from the personal to the social, from the individual to the community, from bio-cultural to political, and from the practice to the policy (Friedler 2021). Conventional strategies of mass media try to identify and fill the knowledge gap where the media advocacy approach opens to speak about the power gap.…”