"Sociology [Of Race] And Swine Flu".
Sociology and swine flu
By Frank Hutchins
The swine flu may have produced, in the end, more squeal than suffering. Regardless of how far the outbreak spreads, and how furiously it stalks its victims, it's clear that "pandemic" has now become part of our lexicon. It's also obvious that disease brings out our dis-ease with many things, among which are cultural and physical differences.
As we wrestle with globalization and its myriad pathogens, we must realize that we live in a world where old stereotypes linking certain sicknesses with hygiene and race only weigh us down as we scramble to catch up to the germs.
History is filled with stories of quarantines, isolation units, and pariah-making in the name of separating sick from well bodies. In some cases, this is good epidemiology. In other cases, it is blatant prejudice. Rudyard Kipling, wielding perhaps the mightiest pen of the colonial era, obsessed over the unsanitary practices of India's many peoples. In City of Dreadful Night, he wrote: "The damp, drainage-soaked soil is sick with the teeming life of a hundred years, and the Municipal Board list is choked with the names of natives — men of the breed born in and raised off this surfeited muck-heap!"
A geography of health and disease evolved throughout the tropics, as certain racial and body types were identified by Europeans as prone to sloth, controlled by passions, and generally stewing in miasmas and microbes. More recently, the dark shadows of polio were attributed to "dirty" immigrants, and cholera outbreaks in Latin America were first associated with the poorer, indigenous countries of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, even though more "developed" countries such as Chile also had many cases.
As it became apparent that swine flu existed and was breaking out across the globe, the finger-pointing began. "The recent outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and over 40 cases in the United States exposes yet another aspect of mass immigration into the United States," wrote Frosty Wooldridge in Right Side News. "Such outbreaks of diseases stem from cultures that lack personal hygiene, personal health habits and standards for disease prevention."
This will explain some particular cases in some particular places. But it is grossly simplistic, and ignores the fact that diseases move in many directions under many different conditions. Anthropologists debated several years ago whether some members of its own profession, which has long prided itself on cultural sensitivity, might have carried deadly measles to the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon rainforest.
As I left Ecuador two years ago, major newspapers reported that an Italian woman who arrived in Quito aboard a KLM flight had tested positive for measles. The concern was that a plane full of tourists had spread around the country, which had eliminated measles a decade before, and might be infecting countless others, some with little immunity to the disease.
There's also the reality that many "First World" ailments (think obesity, diabetes, various cancers) have moved south with our fast foods, our oil companies and our tobacco merchants. Focusing too readily on individual bodies blinds us to certain structures that likely play a far more significant role in disease patterns.
Why do some places lack potable water or accessible clinics? Why are some people educated and others not? Why can some people buy better and healthier foods than others? If we are truly panicked about pandemics, then we need to inoculate ourselves first against ignorance and xenophobia.
Frank Hutchins is an associate professor of Anthropology at Bellarmine Universty.
By Frank Hutchins
The swine flu may have produced, in the end, more squeal than suffering. Regardless of how far the outbreak spreads, and how furiously it stalks its victims, it's clear that "pandemic" has now become part of our lexicon. It's also obvious that disease brings out our dis-ease with many things, among which are cultural and physical differences.
As we wrestle with globalization and its myriad pathogens, we must realize that we live in a world where old stereotypes linking certain sicknesses with hygiene and race only weigh us down as we scramble to catch up to the germs.
History is filled with stories of quarantines, isolation units, and pariah-making in the name of separating sick from well bodies. In some cases, this is good epidemiology. In other cases, it is blatant prejudice. Rudyard Kipling, wielding perhaps the mightiest pen of the colonial era, obsessed over the unsanitary practices of India's many peoples. In City of Dreadful Night, he wrote: "The damp, drainage-soaked soil is sick with the teeming life of a hundred years, and the Municipal Board list is choked with the names of natives — men of the breed born in and raised off this surfeited muck-heap!"
A geography of health and disease evolved throughout the tropics, as certain racial and body types were identified by Europeans as prone to sloth, controlled by passions, and generally stewing in miasmas and microbes. More recently, the dark shadows of polio were attributed to "dirty" immigrants, and cholera outbreaks in Latin America were first associated with the poorer, indigenous countries of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, even though more "developed" countries such as Chile also had many cases.
As it became apparent that swine flu existed and was breaking out across the globe, the finger-pointing began. "The recent outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and over 40 cases in the United States exposes yet another aspect of mass immigration into the United States," wrote Frosty Wooldridge in Right Side News. "Such outbreaks of diseases stem from cultures that lack personal hygiene, personal health habits and standards for disease prevention."
This will explain some particular cases in some particular places. But it is grossly simplistic, and ignores the fact that diseases move in many directions under many different conditions. Anthropologists debated several years ago whether some members of its own profession, which has long prided itself on cultural sensitivity, might have carried deadly measles to the Yanomami Indians of the Amazon rainforest.
As I left Ecuador two years ago, major newspapers reported that an Italian woman who arrived in Quito aboard a KLM flight had tested positive for measles. The concern was that a plane full of tourists had spread around the country, which had eliminated measles a decade before, and might be infecting countless others, some with little immunity to the disease.
There's also the reality that many "First World" ailments (think obesity, diabetes, various cancers) have moved south with our fast foods, our oil companies and our tobacco merchants. Focusing too readily on individual bodies blinds us to certain structures that likely play a far more significant role in disease patterns.
Why do some places lack potable water or accessible clinics? Why are some people educated and others not? Why can some people buy better and healthier foods than others? If we are truly panicked about pandemics, then we need to inoculate ourselves first against ignorance and xenophobia.
Frank Hutchins is an associate professor of Anthropology at Bellarmine Universty.
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