Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographies conducted in Guinea since 2020, I analyze how development and epidemic surveillance initiatives institutionalize negative narratives about local actors, perpetuating historical dominations and contributing to the stigmatization of populations deemed originators of epidemics.

Paper long abstract:

Amid recent epidemic crises in Guinea, global health institutions have implemented nationwide epidemic preparedness and management policies, alongside development projects targeting improved population health through healthcare access, clean water, and nutritional monitoring. Drawing on ethnographies conducted in Guinea since 2020, I analyze the complexities of these development and epidemic surveillance initiatives. I study how these projects and policies contribute to the “projectization and partnering” of the Guinean State, characterized by a dependency on development and epidemic funding, a delegation of public services to external partners and funders, and the perception of epidemics and crises as economic opportunities. I explore how various actors are conceptualized, polarized, and hierarchized through categories from the realms of development and health, questioning how this perpetuates historical dominations by institutionalizing a negative narrative about local populations. I examine how this contributes to the State's abdication of responsibility and the stigmatization of populations deemed "originators of epidemics" due to their practices and cultures—participating in marginalizing and discrediting local practices and actors in Guinea, while overlooking local "community" systems for epidemic risk management. I interrogate how these narratives obscure structural political power and domination relationships in a postcolonial context, questioning the surveillance of Southern global risk countries by Northern and/or global institutions without healthcare provision for the population. Finally, I examine the role of anthropologists caught between these power dynamics, as they are widely seen in Guinea as social mediators capable of averting "community hesitations" since the Ebola epidemic of 2014-2016.