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.

Jens Seeberg is Professor of Anthropology at Aarhus University. He is the director at the Center for Biosocial Inquiries at Aarhus University and has published on a variety of subjects including inequity in health, private healthcare and medical systems in India.

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 Grøn

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 Dillé 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