Epidemics are experienced as events that suddenly come and go. But disease outbreaks – and measures taken to combat them – leave traces. For example, we live with cemeteries, hygiene rules and water supplies, which were created during the cholera epidemics of the 19th century; tropical diseases were fought with continuous landscape changes and insecticides, which are still present in the soil, water and bodies; global vaccination campaigns against childhood diseases in the 1970s built new health systems; 2000s HIV programs created new hospitals and united activist groups, which continued after the AIDS epidemic; Covid-19 will leave behind, among other things, new digital control technologies and legislation.
Epidemic traces can be material, such as infrastructure or bodies, and immaterial, such as language and routines – and these remnants are not just memories of the past, but have unexpected or unintended effects, long after they were created. Infrastructure or medicine for a disease can be reused for new health problems; landscapes can be settled after an epidemic is brought under control; future disease outbreaks can be predicted due to historical experience. But epidemic traces can also create new diseases, if, for example, medicines lose their effectiveness or increase susceptibility to new diseases, when insecticides cause cancer, or if bad experiences with disease control leave a lasting distrust of health institutions. Epidemics overlap and interact over time, through their persistent traces. And: beyond health and the body, epidemic traces can affect human society, politics, economics or religion – which in turn can create a breeding ground for new health problems.
EpiTraces combines social anthropology – which studies human life, relationships and institutions in the present – ??and history – which uses archives and oral testimony, as well as material remains – to pursue how the traces of epidemics and disease control in Africa throughout the 20th century affect health, bodies, landscapes and societies today and in the future. We follow the traces of exemplary epidemics such as sleeping sickness, malaria and river blindness, HIV, Ebola and Covid, in the present, and their multiple social, medical, political-economic and ecological effects. In doing so, the project contributes to a nuanced picture of ongoing epidemics, such as cancer or diabetes, and future disease outbreaks, which will benefit preventive strategies, and shed light on the influence that past disease and health interventions have on Africa today and in the future.
Common to all sub-projects is that, after exploring the past through both archival sources, oral testimony, private documents and examinations of material remains, they have focused most on specific places and social groups and their lives in the present – ??e.g. environmental activism in an industrial city with long-standing health problems, plant medicine use after chemical disease control, pesticide research and state regulation of harmful agricultural chemicals, agriculture and settlements in a former leper colony. The individual projects thus become more ethnographic – they create new knowledge through longer stays and interaction with the people at the research sites, and based on their goals and challenges – and at the same time illuminate – across the sub-projects – how epidemics and health measures have shaped society and everyday life in post-colonial Africa.
At the same time, all subprojects have developed new interdisciplinary forms of collaboration with toxicologists and botanists, environmental activists and decision-makers, as well as with artists, and various “stakeholder engagement” activities with these new and old partners. One subproject organizes an annual workshop on measures to reduce chemical use in agriculture, which brings together researchers and activists from several East African countries, another subproject has made a film about life and the landscape after leprosy, and a third subproject is preparing an exhibition about life and well-being in a West African industrial city. These engagements have benefited from collaboration with related projects under the NORHED 2 program, which focuses on health and environment in East Africa, and thus contribute to building a sustainable anthropological research environment on sustainability and well-being – at UiO and in East Africa.
The project uses social anthropology and medical history to study how past epidemics and anti-epidemic measures in Africa - from colonial times to the recent past - continue to shape conditions of public health and disease control, today and in the future.
Africa’s 20th century history was marked by a sequence of major epidemics. Instead of studying epidemics as singular events, our project studies the continuous interaction of epidemics and the measures taken against them. The significance of relations between historical disease outbreaks and their control has become evident in responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which mobilised social structures, technologies and infrastructures from previous epidemics, such as HIV AIDS and Ebola.
Methodologically, the project focuses on the material traces of past epidemics and anti-epidemic measures, i.e., the lasting remains they left, including architecture and technology, plant life and chemical residuals, residence patterns and agriculture, habitual practices of institutions and professionals, and physical changes of patient bodies, disease vectors and pathogens. Using an innovative methodology developed by the applicants with colleagues from science and technology studies and contemporary archaeology, the project will study these traces ethnographically, that is attending to social life, relations and interactions around them in the present - how epidemic traces are used, given meaning, and contested.
The project will produce new knowledge of the lasting effects of past epidemics and anti-epidemic interventions, on health conditions, public health and disease control, and the potential for future disease (re-)emergence. This will allow identifying present challenges and opportunities for public health and disease control work in relation to on-going epidemics. Moreover, creating awareness of the long-term impact of anti-epidemic interventions will help planning sustainable and responsible disease control for the future.
