Medicine Anthropology Theory “Zoonosis: Prospects and challenges for medical anthropology”

AUTHORS / RESEARCHERS: FRÉDÉRIC KECK AND CHRISTOS LYNTERIS

This special issue of Medicine Anthropology Theory covers for the first time a range of ethnographic and historical studies on the management of zoonoses in different locations, from plague in India to rabies in Canada passing by MERS-Cov in the Saudi Peninsula or avian influenza in China. Positioned and enriched by concurrent developments in biosecurity studies, critical animal studies, and debates around the notion of the Anthropocene, these studies focus on discourses and practices relating to human-animal relations as sites of medical, epidemiological and public health problematisation, intervention, and contestation. The introduction of the volume draws a genealogy of the notions of zoonosis, animal reservoir and spillover, and reflects on the ontological and epistemological challenges of working on biopolitical interventions in human/animal relations.

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