Anthropologica

Introduction: Global Vaccine Logics

Janice Graham — 2024-11-05

Introduction : Logique mondiale des vaccins

Janice Graham — 2024-11-05

“Let’s say it wears an Ebola Coat, but it’s not Ebola”: The Rhetoric and Politics of Reframing a Vaccine for a Transnational Clinical Trial

Oumy Thiongane — 2024-11-05

Focusing on how disease, health and vaccine research take on different forms, meanings and interpretations in diverse contexts, we examine the use of rhetoric to recruit people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa for an Ebola vaccine clinical trial. Conducted after the West African Ebola outbreak in a country that had not been affected by Ebola, the urgency, relevance and materiality of disease, health and biomedical research takes on different shapes, meanings and understandings. The limitations of multilateral initiatives to address inequalities in associated healthcare and access to essential medicines and vaccines highlight the tensions created when neither local researchers nor patient communities have been involved in the design or planning of the trial, and when the pathologies targeted by experimental technologies are either inappropriate for the people they are aimed at, or unfold without the knowledge of a social consensus.

By deciphering the metaphorical discourse on an Ebola vaccine candidate and the erasure of a viral ontology from the hybrid technology to which it gives rise, we understand that the discourse of clinic staff makes it possible to establish a scientific truth in the service of instrumental productivity: manufacturing consent and recruiting arms for vaccine shots.

In this article, we show that the closure of biomedicine to an esoteric discourse reflects the weakness of science in communicating what it actually does and the techniques it produces. It also addresses the failure of community engagement in the field of emerging infectious diseases.

Vacciner contre la COVID-19 ? Interroger l’agenda hégémonique de la santé globale depuis la Guinée

Gassim Sylla — 2024-11-06

Guinea has a low COVID-19 vaccination coverage (28% as of 22 February 2023). Instead of seeing this low vaccination rate as a failure, we suggest discussing this as a local response to the global health agenda. This study is built on the ethnography of Guinea’s vaccination implementation and was conducted by the authors from March 2020 to October 2020 in the capital and the country’s interior. Healthcare stakeholders and individuals, both vaccinated and unvaccinated, were surveyed, and the political context under which the campaign was rolled out was analyzed. Far from being a homogeneous commentary by global healthcare stakeholders, we describe how the vaccination policy is dependent on multilateral and bilateral relations that shape its vaccination availability. Procuring input, the health situation and political tension associated with COVID-19 call into question the legitimacy of preventive measures, specifically vaccination. On the other hand, promised actions in the global health arena to respond to the COVID-19 epidemic (lockdown, vaccination) disregarded the political and biological conditions encountered by the virus in Guinea. By mobilizing the concept of situated biology (lock), the relevance of a universal agenda for global health must be discussed.

Political and Community Logics of Emergent Disease Vaccine Deployment: Anthropological Insights from DRC, Uganda and Tanzania

Shelley Lees — 2024-11-05

With a growing number of emerging infectious diseases and the rapid development of vaccines during epidemics and pandemics, public health officials at the global and national level have reported concerns about vaccine hesitancy, often attributing this to a problem of misinformation and poor understanding of risk. However, social scientists have found that vaccination perceptions are complex and multi-faceted. By focusing on the historical, cultural and political influences that affect vaccine acceptance, as well as social justice questions that examine the fair distribution of vaccines, we explore the political and community logics of vaccine deployment using a case study approach. We found differing logics depending on the vaccine and the context and argue that political and community logics come to the forefront during outbreaks as vaccine strategies often are imposed—in different ways—by the Global North. We suggest that, prior to the development and deployment of new vaccines for emergent diseases in the Global South, political level and community logics must be acknowledged and engaged with.

The Revival of Cholera Vaccines: The Century-Old Making of a Global Success Story

Leonardo Heyerdahl — 2024-11-05

Cholera vaccines have existed since the nineteenth century but were largely considered an ineffective control strategy for much of their history. However, in 2012, cholera vaccination campaigns were piloted in Haiti and Guinea using a preexisting vaccine formula. These initial efforts quickly expanded to dozens of countries. A global stockpile of millions of doses was established, positioning cholera vaccines as a cornerstone to the Global Task Force on Cholera Control’s Roadmap to ending cholera by 2030. What factors contributed to this remarkable turnaround? This piece explores the epistemic, moral, and industrial reconfigurations that sustained the crafting of a global vaccine success story and its ramifications within a shifting global health landscape, including the potential displacement of water and sanitation interventions. The research is based on my participation in cholera vaccine introductions as a medical NGO worker and on symmetric ethnographic fieldwork conducted in African settings targeted for reactive cholera vaccination and in global North centers influencing global cholera vaccine policy.

Leaky Vaccines: A Wicked Problem in Accelerated Vaccine Development

Janice Graham — 2024-11-05

While no vaccine can provide 100 percent protection, a high standard of regulatory safety, efficacy and quality is essential for public trust and the uptake of vaccines as essential global public health tools. This article addresses a growing concern that suboptimal “leaky” vaccines threaten emergency response to pandemics as well as routine public health programs. Agile regulatory standards now advance earlier approval of vaccines and therapeutics that may have suboptimal effectiveness. The benefit-harm trade- offs that play an enormous role in regulatory assessment and all stages of vaccine development and delivery deserve better public scrutiny, transparency, and accountability. Drawing on the case of the first licensed malaria vaccine, RTS,S Mosquirix™, in light of the rapid approval of COVID-19 vaccines, we consider the socio-technical implications of leaky vaccines in global vaccine logics and suggest possibilities for building legitimacy to inform the next generation of regulatory technology policy.

Vaccins imparfaits : Un problème épineux dans le développement accéléré des vaccins

Janice Graham — 2024-11-05

While no vaccine can provide 100 percent protection, a high standard of regulatory safety, efficacy and quality is essential for public trust and the uptake of vaccines as essential global public health tools. This article addresses a growing concern that suboptimal “leaky” vaccines threaten emergency response to pandemics as well as routine public health programs. Agile regulatory standards now advance earlier approval of vaccines and therapeutics that may have suboptimal effectiveness. The benefit-harm tradeoffs that play an enormous role in regulatory assessment and all stages of vaccine development and delivery deserve better public scrutiny, transparency, and accountability. Drawing on the case of the first licensed malaria vaccine, RTS,S Mosquirix™, in light of the rapid approval of COVID-19 vaccines, we consider the socio- technical implications of leaky vaccines in global vaccine logics and suggest possibilities for building legitimacy to inform the next generation of regulatory technology policy.

Politics of HIV Vaccine Research from International to Global Health

Pierre-Marie David — 2024-11-05

Paradoxically, the absence of HIV vaccine has been very structuring for global vaccine logics, and, more broadly, “global health” research. HIV vaccine research has oscillated between optimism and pessimism and has been central to the humanist justification for research in the South. From the attempt by the World Health Organization’s Vaccine Development Unit (VAD) on AIDS to become the centre of an “international” coordination effort to the diplomatic work involved with Thailand’s HIV research, I describe political contexts, and postcolonial power relations connected to HIV vaccine research. I argue that the failure of “international” coordination has paved the way for another politicization of global HIV vaccine research which led to a shift away from inter-state diplomacy to a “stateless” situation where the global vaccine logics contribute to the development of an experimental regime that relies on the capture of public resources and the availability of depoliticized biological subjects for the purposes of private valorization.

Goodbye Sékou : Perdre un esprit engagé dans les politiques de développement et la recherche en santé globale

Oumy Thiongane — 2024-11-05

While paying tribute to Sékou, one of the important collaborators of Global Vaccine Logics who left us in December 2020, we want to highlight the important place that research assistants and young African researchers play in global health projects. Part of Sékou’s trajectory, while revealing beyond the reflections, the intertwining of health, extraction, and commitment, leads us to make a vibrant call to improve the conditions of research in African universities and to favor the decolonization of the conditions of knowledge production in order to pave the way, to leave room and to give voice and credit to the expertise of the young African generation that is taking over.

What Counts as Global Health?

Margaret Macdonald — 2024-11-05

Safe abortion access is an essential aspect of reproductive justice and key to reducing global rates of maternal mortality, yet within the global heath enterprise, the rhetoric of sexual and reproductive health and rights has not yet been realised in practice. Access to safe legal abortion remains inequitable globally and within nations and deaths due to unsafe abortion take their highest toll in the Global South in jurisdictions with restrictive laws. Clandestine abortion access activist networks have been filling this gap offering life, dignity and futures to the people who seek their services. What should we make of clandestine activist networks around the world that help people access medication abortion? Such groups have been important players in women’s reproductive health in many jurisdictions for decades – but have typically, by necessity and design, flown under the radar. If visibility, accountability and humanitarian appeal are essential characteristic of global health work, how do we acknowledge and understand the work of clandestine abortion access activist networks? Does it count as global health? In this essay I offer the notion of ‘critique in action’ to further our understanding of such networks and also consider the idea of abortion access activist networks as an anti-regime of global health.

Remembering Droughts and Abundance: Ecological Memory in the Semi-arid Region of Northeast Brazil

Renan Martins Pereira — 2024-11-05

In Floresta, a municipality in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil, the past is considered a time of greater regularity of the climate, natural wealth of the Caatinga biome, and solidarity among the residents of the city’s rural area. Memories of certain historical events can refer to an ‘ancient time’ in which ‘abundance,’ despite the calamities generated by droughts throughout the occupation of this territory, is considered one of its main socio- ecological attributes. In the context of the violent climatic transformations of contemporaneity, analyzing the actions of the memory of old inhabitants of the Brazilian semi-arid region will be a way of first, ethnographically questioning the history of droughts to which the entire ecology of this region has been reduced by historiography and national literature; second, inquiring the human centrality of modern memory—still today a defining theoretical paradigm of social and cultural studies of memory in anthropology. To this end, memories of droughts and abundance will be articulated with the concept of “duration” (la durée) of French philosopher Henri Bergson to think of memory and the duration of time as a way of ecologically living the past, the present, and the future.

La pêche wolastoqey à l’oursin vert : Agencement socioécologique dans l’estuaire du Saint-Laurent

Charlotte Gagnon-Lewis — 2024-11-05

This research explores the rationale behind the commercial fishing of green sea urchins by the Wolastoqiyik Wahsipekuk First Nation. This fishing practice balances a number of rationales: local and global, territorial claims and foreign markets, industrial approaches and environmental concerns. The article proposes that contemporary anthropology, through the concept of assemblage, allows for a fuller understanding of the complex realities of this practice. Based on ethnographic data collected in the Bas-Saint-Laurent sea urchin industry, the article maintains that this harvest allows fishers to preserve their tenure over ancestral territory despite contemporary environmental, economic and political pressure. The article also suggests that considering this negotiation creates opportunities to rethink our food procurement methods which are ill-suited to the fluctuating realities of the contemporary world.

Traditional Environmental Knowledge in a Changing Environment: Vuntut Gwitchin Observations of Change in the Yukon Territory

Erin Consiglio — 2024-11-05

Scientists, resource managers and developers increasingly seek out Traditional or Indigenous Knowledge to deepen their understanding of the environment. Yet, even as the value of this knowledge is recognized, misperceptions remain; Traditional Knowledge is still often seen as something static, unchanged from one generation to the next rather than as something flexible and adaptive. Ethnographic research with the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation challenges these perceptions. Their observations of contemporary environmental change in the western Canadian Arctic are becoming part of their Traditional Knowledge, proving that this system of knowledge is resilient and will continue even as the environment becomes ever more unpredictable.

Des voies de l’ombre : Quand les chauves-souris sèment le trouble, par Frédéric Laugrand et Antoine Laugrand

Benoît Vermander — 2024-11-05

Nature, culture et inégalités. Une perspective comparative et historique, par Thomas Piketty

Benoit Coutu — 2024-11-05

Pourquoi la démocratie a besoin de la religion, par Hartmut Rosa

Benoit Coutu — 2024-11-05

L’Invention de la civilisation occidentale, par Thomas C. Patterson

Yves Laberge — 2024-11-05

Where Cloud is Ground. Placing Data and Making Place in Iceland, par Alix Johnson

Sandrine Lambert — 2024-11-05

Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence, by Deborah Puccio-Den

Rodrigo Peña González — 2024-11-05

In Search of Atmospheres: Directions, Methods, Perspectives: An interview with Tonino Griffero

Sergei Sokolovskiy — 2024-11-05

The interview touches upon the diversity of traditions (including national ones) of atmospheric research, on the correlation of the concepts of (affective) atmosphere with the concepts of mood (Stimmung) and ambiance, on research methods and ways of conceptualizing atmospheric phenomena by the German phenomenologist, Hermann Schmitz, and the specialist in aesthetics, Gernot Böhme, and, finally, on the prospects of using the methods and approaches under consideration in social sciences.