Immunocapital: Pandemics, Publics, and Immunity

Understanding how knowledge about immunity has evolved during and before pandemics is one of the most pressing and complex questions in global health today as it can shape health outcomes and recovery in a time of recurring pandemics. The PI will train graduate students in anthropology and history, and work with undergraduates. This project will help frame global health case studies. These will be available as open-source material and used in teaching programs in social medicine, epidemiology and health communication in US medical schools. This course material will also be used for curricular collaborations in global health teaching programs. The project will also offer a podcast titled, Infection and Immunity in Cities: A Global Cities Podcast anchored in New York City, bringing together scholars, health activists, and policy makers. This podcast will focus on reaching a younger public and lay listenership, to familiarize them with historical debates relating to health crises and risks. This project aims to explore and uncover how knowledge and practices relating to immunity are debated, recast and managed during pandemics. It offers a unique perspective at the intersections of biological, economic and social ideas to explore how the meanings of immunity are periodically recreated by experts, policymakers, and by the public’s understanding of epidemic disease and preventive health. Using historical, ethnographic, and policy analysis, this project will situate knowledge formation about immunity historically in colonial, post-colonial and globalizing structures, and explore how they are colored by long-term experiences of racism, poverty, labor practices, and exclusion. In global health–in recent decades–populations are evaluated and termed as being valued and productive as human capital, or viewed as dependent and unsuccessful based on their immunity and productivity, and these perspectives need to be recalibrated based on comparative, historical research. This raises questions about how science, economic, and political priorities are fused to shape the infrastructure of health, and indirectly affect choices about whose health and ill health matters are considered. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.