Viral Loads
Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19
Edited by Lenore Manderson, Nancy J. Burke, and Ayo Wahlberg
List of contributors
Ayo Wahlberg, Nancy J. Burke and Lenore Manderson
Nancy J. Burke
Lenore Manderson and Susan Levine
Elisa J. Sobo and Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
Hanna Garth
Jennie Gamlin, Sahra Gibbon, and Melania Calestani
Aditya Bharawaj
Cristina A. Pop
Oğuz Alyanak
Ato Kwamena Onoma
Surekha Garimella, Shrutika Murthy, Lana Whittaker and Rachel Tolhurst
Linda Rae Bennett and Setiyani Marta Dewi
Claudia Fonseca and Soraya Fleischer
Abril Saldaña-Tejeda
Sabina Faiz Rashid, Selima Kabir, Kim Ozano, Sally Theobald, Bachera Aktar and Aisha Siddika
Ellen Block and Cecilia Vindrola-Padros
Sofie Rosenlund Lau, Marie Kofod Svensson, Natasja Kingod, and Ayo Wahlberg
Earvin Charles Cabalquinto and Tanja Ahlin
Haripriya Narasimhan, Mahati Chittem, and Pooja Purang
Tsipy Ivry and Sarah Segal-Katz
Rebecca Marsland
Gideon Lasco
Chiara Bodini and Ivo Quaranta
'The scope of Viral Loads is admirable and informative. Its 23 chapters are grounded in Cuba, South Africa, Romania, India, and many other locales, and in topics including conspiracy theories, disability and chronic illness, sexual and reproductive health, gender, racism, and poverty.... A significant strength of Viral Loads is that its authors, affiliated with institutions on 5 continents, draw their analyses from various parts of the global north and global south: a truly international effort....abounding in rich ethnographic insights'
The Polyphony
‘Viral Loads demonstrates anthropology’s power of description, analysis and theory to capture a global tragedy as it unfolds. This impressive volume brings together anthropologists from around the world, who draw on their own deep knowledge to trace COVID’s impact on social, economic and political life. The authors offer compassionate accounts of the power of the virus to exploit and magnify social and structural vulnerabilities, while they present impassioned arguments of the imperative to address underlying inequalities, local and global, that continue to threaten our very existence.’ – Melissa Parker, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
‘This impressive collection of well researched and preciously substantiated essays shows that evidence-based scholarship has not gone to sleep despite the Covid-19 menace and its imposition of physical and social distancing. If anything, the pandemic has introduced an urgency to social enquiry informed by improvisation and complementarity between virtual and face-to-face encounters.’ – Francis B. Nyamnjoh, University of Cape Town
‘In Viral Loads, the editors and contributors offer a penetrating analysis of how, worldwide, the COVID pandemic has exposed and exploited the racially, socioeconomically and globally uneven ways in which people live; it demands, in response, that we extend our rationales emergent from anthropological and interdisciplinary architectures. This broad and intensive work is as much a book of the academy as it is of the heart, with enormously important ramifications for humankind in the present and for the future. As the authors sort through the global mess our species has managed to create, they argue the urgency to address underlying social, political, and ecological dimension of inequality, acute stratifications, economic disjunctions, forced human migrations, and political lethargy; without this, we are doomed to face many more rounds of equivalent pandemic disasters. From the Amazon to the Sonoran Desert, and from Pretoria to Mumbai, the narrative is excruciatingly tragic yet ironically hopeful. All are immensely tired of seeing death visiting unequally, but none have permitted their exhaustion to diminish their commitment to enhance the lives of the communities and people whom they champion and to speak to power. This is a magnificent work of action and reflection that must be read carefully and with care. To not do so is to ensure the present as the continuing model for the future.’ – Carlos G. Vélez-Ibáñez, Arizona State University
Format: Hardback
Size: 234 × 156 mm
488 Pages
20 B&W illustrations
Copyright: © 2021
ISBN: 9781800080256
Publication: September 20, 2021
Series: Embodying Inequalities: Perspectives from Medical Anthropology
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