HIV-2: Emergence and Epidemiology
Moderator: Susan Perkins (Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics, American Museum of Natural History)
Catherine Bolten (University of Notre Dame)
“Disease Emergence through Material Proximity: Mapping Zoonosis in Multi-Species Research”
The “spillover event” hypothesis that dominates research into viral zoonotic diseases is predicated on the idea that these viruses—from HIV to Ebola—“jump” intact from an animal host or vector to humans, and then wreck havoc in the human population. Aside from inquiring into medical documents and other fragments of written history, there currently exist few ways to move the analysis of zoonotic disease emergence beyond this simplistic narrative. This paper articulates the study of “material proximities”, or the use of ethnographic methods such as observation, interviewing, and documentation of the movement of people and other species, to illuminate the possible pathways by which viral diseases can circulate between and among human and other species populations. Utilizing examples from my ongoing research in Sierra Leone on pathways such as the human foraging of wild foods, wildlife crop raiding practices, and multi-species use of oil palm trees, I investigate novel sites for productive thinking about the transference of disease between humans and other animals that potentially promote viral emergence.
