Main description:

Expanding our understanding of contagion beyond the typical notions of infection and pandemics, this book widens the field to include the concept of biosocial epidemics. The chapters propose varied and detailed answers to questions about epidemics and their contagious potential for specific infections and non-infectious conditions. Together they explore how inseparable social and biological processes configure co-existing influences, which create epidemics, and in doing so stress the role of social inequality in these processes. The authors compellingly show that epidemics do not spread evenly in populations or through simple coincidental biological contagion: they are biosocially structured and selective, and happen under specific economic, political and environmental conditions. This volume illustrates that an understanding of biosocial factors is vital for ensuring effective strategies for the containment of epidemics.

Contents:

List of Figures

Introduction: Configuring Contagion in Biosocial epidemics

Lotte Meinert and Jens Seeberg

Chapter 1. Gender Configurations and Suicide in Northern Uganda

Susan Whyte and Henry Oboke

Chapter 2. Configuring Epidemic Suicide in Oceania

Ted Lowe

Chapter 3. Haunted by the Future: Autism and the Spectre of Prison - Configuring Race and Disability in the African American Community

Cheryl Mattingly and Stephanie Keeney Parks

Chapter 4. Configuring Affection: Family Experiences of Obesity and Social Contagion in Denmark

Lone Gron

Chapter 5. Health Activists and Trauma Contagion: Cultural Epidemics and Raising Awareness of Trauma in Post-conflict, Post-tsunami Aceh

Jesse Hession Grayman, Mary-Jo DelVeccio Good and Byron Good

Chapter 6. Touched by Violence: Configuring Affliction after War in Northern Uganda

Lars Williams and Lotte Meinert

Chapter 7. 'These Spirit Attacks are Like an Epidemic': Spirit Possession as Affective Contagion in Niger

Adeline Masquelier, Abouzeidi Maidouka Dille and Ly Amadou H. Belko

Chapter 8. Haunted by Internet Porn: Configuration of a Hidden Contagion

Doug Hollan

Chapter 9. Contagious Configurations: Reproductive Governance from Abortion to Zika virus in Latin America

Lynn M. Morgan

Chapter 10. Figures of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis.

Jens Seeberg, Bijaylaxmi Rautray and Shyama Mohapatra

Afterword: Epidemics and Ghosts

Byron Good

Index