Viral Entanglements: Bodies, Belonging and Truth‐claims in Health Borderlands

Abstract

This paper contributes to anthropological debates surrounding borderlands and biosecurity by tracing the multiple pursuits of protection that emerge between the state and minorities during infectious disease outbreaks. Drawing on an ethnographic study into child health in Jerusalem following epidemics of measles and COVID-19, the paper demonstrates how responses to public health interventions are less about 'compliance' or 'indiscipline' than a competing pursuit of immunity to preserve religiously Orthodox lifeworlds. The voices of religiously Orthodox Jews are situated alongside printed broadsides (pashkevilim) that circulated anonymous truth-claims in Jerusalem neighborhoods, which cast state intervention against historical narratives of deception and ethical failures. Borderland tensions, like a virus, mutate and influence responses to authority and biosecurity, and reconfigure vernacular entanglements of religion, state, and health. The paper encourages anthropologists and public health specialists to consider non-vaccination beyond a COVID-19 silo, and as part of situated relations between the state and minority populations.

“We think this way as a society!”: Community-level science literacy among ultra-Orthodox Jews

“…While seeds of these critiques were visible pre-COVID-19, especially during the last wave of vaccine hesitancy ( Kasstan, 2022a , 2022b ), COVID-19 brought these alternative cultures of Haredi medicine and health organizations to the forefront of public debate as Haredi Jews were slower to adhere to social distancing guidelines and slower to vaccinate amid the pandemic, reflecting “how public health emergencies reveal multiple ideas of immunity between health services and religiously Orthodox minorities” ( Kasstan, 2022a : 4). There were also some groups, particularly Hasidic Haredi groups in Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States, who decided to pursue herd immunity to avoid having to close religious institutions, in direct opposition to state guidelines.…”

Barriers to the Healthcare System Faced by Ultra-Orthodox Religious Disaffiliates

“…The healthcare system is a focal point where state, religion, medicine, and health are intertwined and negotiated (Ivry 2010;Kasstan 2022). According to Kasstan (2019), for ultra-Orthodox Jews in England, healthcare constitutes a borderland through which multiple and sometimes opposing understandings of bodily governance and care come into contact.…”

Commemorations and outreach: Shi‘i leaders of metro Detroit take on the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Liberal secular theory often assumes that religious beliefs and institutions are obstacles to public health (Kasstan, 2022). At the same time, orientalist and Islamophobic narratives conceive of Islam, in particular, as anti‐science, depicting Muslims as feuding, tribal, corrupt, threatening, and backward.…”

“…Muslims, they told us in our interviews, should practice tawakkul (reliance on God), but they should do so by making use of the mediums God has provided, which in this case included masks and vaccines, for the benefit of the self and others. This guidance occurred even as US media, public narratives, and government policy positioned them (as migrants and minorities) not only as vectors of health risk (Kasstan, 2022) but as a possible threat (Howell, 2011; Mamdani, 2002).…”