The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives

This volume examines anthropological contributions to the study of infectious disease and to the study of actual infectious disease eradication programmes. Chapters explore co-evolution of genes and cultural traits; the cultural construction of disease and how these models influence health-seeking behaviour; cultural adaptive strategies to infectious disease problems; the ways in which ethnography sheds light on epidemiological patterns of infectious disease; the practical and ethical dilemmas that anthropologists face by participating in infectious disease programmes; and the political ecology of infectious disease problems.