Detect, Investigate, Diagnose: Configuring Care in the Context of AIDS and Ebola Epidemics
Drawing on ethnographic and historical research on HIV/AIDS care and support and the 2014–16 epidemic of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Adia Benton addressed some political and economic factors underpinning epidemic response, as well as the means by which state and non-state actors configure care during epidemics. She also underlined the urgent need to study histories and anthropologies of epidemics so that we may better prepare ourselves for future pandemics.
About the Anthropologist
Adia Benton is an associate professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Northwestern University, where she is affiliated with the Science in Human Culture Program. She is the author of the award-winning book, HIV Exceptionalism: Development through Disease in Sierra Leone, and is currently writing a book about the West African Ebola outbreak. More broadly, she studies the political, economic and historical factors shaping how care is provided in complex humanitarian emergencies and in longer-term development projects—like those for health.
