Anthropological contributions to the study of infectious disease and to the study of actual infectious disease eradication programmes have rarely been collected in one volume. In the era of AIDS and the global resurgance of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria, there is widespread interest and concern about the cultural, ecological and political factors that are directly related to the increased prevalence of infectious disease. In this book, the authors have assembled the growing scholarship in one volume. Chapters explore the coevolution 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.
Marcia C. Inhorn PhD, MPH, is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs in the Department of Anthropology and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She also serves as Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies.
Before coming to Yale in 2008, Inhorn was a professor of medical anthropology at the University of Michigan and president of the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association.
A specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues, Inhorn has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 20 years. She is the author of three books on the subject, Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilization in Egypt (Routledge, 2003), Infertility and Patriarchy: The Cultural Politics of Gender and Family Life in Egypt (U Pennsylvania Press, 1996) and Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions (U Pennsylvania Press, 1994), which have won the AAA's Eileen Basker Prize and the Diana Forsythe Prize for outstanding feminist anthropological research in the areas of gender, health, science, technology, and biomedicine.
She is also the editor or co-editor of six books, including Anthropology and Public Health: Bridging Differences in Culture and Society (Oxford U Press, 2009), Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, Technology, and Biopolitics in the New Millennium (Berghahn Books, 2007), and Infertility around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (U California Press, 2002). She has been a visiting faculty member at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, where she has conducted studies on "Middle Eastern Masculinities in the Age of New Reproductive Technologies" and "Globalization and Reproductive Tourism in the Arab World." She is the founding editor of JMEWS (Journal of Middle East Women's Studies) of the Association of Middle East Women's Studies, and co-editor of the Berghahn Book series on "Fertility, Sexuality and Reproduction."
