Who’s Afraid of Ebola? Epidemic Fires and Locative Fears

• In Event: Conspiracy, Controversy, and Doubt: Consequences of Knowing and Unknowing

Abstract

Epidemics have traditionally been viewed as the widespread occurrence of infectious disease within a community, or sudden increase above what is typical. But modern epidemics are both more and less than the diffusion of viral entities. We argue that epidemics are fire objects (Law and Singleton 2005) generating locative fears through encounters that focus attention on entities that are unknown, or imprecisely, transforming spaces and humans into indeterminate dangers, alternating appearance and absence. The Ebola and Zika episodes of 2014-2018 had more complex impacts than their number of cases would suggest. The former often had large impacts without measurable infections, while the later had weak impacts even where prevalent. We employ qualitative interviews in ten locations to argue that locative fear is the essence of modern global epidemics.

Authors

• Wesley Shrum, Louisiana State University

• Leandro Rodriguez Medina, Universidad de las Americas Puebla

• John Kojo Aggrey, Louisiana State University

• Paige Miller, University of Wisconsin, River Falls