Towards
an Anthropology of Light and Zoonosis: Shadows of Home
[Co-author: Almudena Marí-Sáez - Charité Berlin]
Abstract
Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (VHFs) persist in darkness. The virulence of pathogens like the Lassa, Marburg or Ebola virus is partly explained by their ability to survive on surfaces outside its infected hosts, provided these surfaces are not exposed to light. There is, in other words, a direct link between darkness and disease transmission. This paper seeks to elaborate anthropologically this basic immunological insights. It will consider how luminosity structures zoonotic exchange, and use this relationship to disrupt public health framings of the “domestic” context of transmission. A collaborative research project into the control of Lassa fever provided the empirical occasion for this paper, and gave us a chance to consider the spectral dimensions of the interactions between humans, rats and domestic materialities in Southern Guinea. Drawing together anthropological scholarship on the sociality of light with recent experiences of working in the context of the Ebola outbreak, we extend these observations to propose new approaches to the study of spillover effects and secondary transmission. The ethnographic engagement with the illumination and shading of pathogenicity offers new resources for coming to grips with the complex interface between viral biology and human-animal sociality. It also helps us unsettle the household as the primary spatial unit of public health.
Bio
Ann H. Kelly is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Her work centers on the practices of public health research, with special attention to the built environment, material artifacts, and affective labors of entomological inquiry in sub-Saharan Africa. She has recently written on the epistemology of makeshift experiments, the disentanglement in human/nonhuman encounters, and the memories of colonial and post-colonial medical research in the tropics.
[email protected]
Abstract
Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers (VHFs) persist in darkness. The virulence of pathogens like the Lassa, Marburg or Ebola virus is partly explained by their ability to survive on surfaces outside its infected hosts, provided these surfaces are not exposed to light. There is, in other words, a direct link between darkness and disease transmission. This paper seeks to elaborate anthropologically this basic immunological insights. It will consider how luminosity structures zoonotic exchange, and use this relationship to disrupt public health framings of the “domestic” context of transmission. A collaborative research project into the control of Lassa fever provided the empirical occasion for this paper, and gave us a chance to consider the spectral dimensions of the interactions between humans, rats and domestic materialities in Southern Guinea. Drawing together anthropological scholarship on the sociality of light with recent experiences of working in the context of the Ebola outbreak, we extend these observations to propose new approaches to the study of spillover effects and secondary transmission. The ethnographic engagement with the illumination and shading of pathogenicity offers new resources for coming to grips with the complex interface between viral biology and human-animal sociality. It also helps us unsettle the household as the primary spatial unit of public health.
Bio
Ann H. Kelly is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Her work centers on the practices of public health research, with special attention to the built environment, material artifacts, and affective labors of entomological inquiry in sub-Saharan Africa. She has recently written on the epistemology of makeshift experiments, the disentanglement in human/nonhuman encounters, and the memories of colonial and post-colonial medical research in the tropics.
[email protected]