Epidemics, Pandemics, and Outbreaks

doi:10.1017/9781108550710.005

Chapter 4 - Epidemics, Pandemics, and Outbreaks

from Part I - Problems Related to Health, Safety, and Security

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2018

Martin French ,

Eric Mykhalovskiy and

Carmen Lamothe

Edited by

A. Javier Treviño

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A. Javier Treviño: Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Massachusetts

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Summary

How do epidemics, pandemics, and outbreaks become recognized as social problems? In this chapter, we suggest that the constructionist perspective focuses on the perception of these phenomena as social problems, often neglecting their materiality. A complementary approach, organized by the concept of medicalization, directs attention to the processes of authority and social control that both produce and regulate epidemics, pandemics, and outbreaks as social problems. In our view, these approaches, while important for the study of medicalized social problems more generally, are somewhat ill-suited to the study of epidemics, pandemics, and outbreaks. Accordingly, we turn to Michel Foucault's conceptualization of governmentality, refracted through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT), as an alternative approach. This yields a perspective on epidemics, pandemics, and outbreaks that arcs back to materiality and also brings attention to the actor-networks, processes, and practices that (imperfectly) translate these phenomena into social problems. As we argue, this method of analysis should consider, at a minimum, (1) cultural understandings about bodily vulnerability; (2) social processes of stigmatization and marginalization; (3) structural inequalities and structural violence; and (4) public health efforts to detect and preempt disease spread.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Social Problems , pp. 59 - 78

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550710.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2018

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