Paper short abstract:

This paper reports the early stages of a ‘biosociality by other means’ project seeking to critically analyse medical, governance and subjective responses to emerging infectious diseases using a sociology of diagnosis perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Zika is a quickly emerging disease in Latin America, already being narrated by public health surveillance systems, epidemiologists, clinical diagnostic practices, community responses, travel alerts, and vector eradication programmes. Zika has been identified in African and Asian territories for decades, and is understood as a virus with an affinity for a particular mosquito that is also the vector for dengue and ch……. The actual fever appears to be mild in humans, although neurological sequelae to infection have been identified including microcephaly in infants born to women pregnant at the time of exposure, and the rare condition Guilliame-Barre disease, both of which can be fatal. The causal mechanisms remain to be determined, and human behaviour is implicated in narratives of emergence of the disease in Latin American context, while differentials in health outcomes have yet to be explained., specifically, why adverse health outcomes from infection appear to affect poorer areas of Latin America more severely. This paper reports the early stages of a 'biosociality by other means' project seeking to critically analyse medical, governance and subjective responses to emerging infectious diseases using a sociology of diagnosis perspective. Later stages of the project will involve ethnographic research in Brazil; this paper focuses on public health narratives of emerging disease and diagnostic practices.