Complexity, anthropology, and epidemics

Abstract

Biomedical and anthropological understandings of complexity are similar. But they are not the same. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork on two different epidemics (the HIV epidemic in East Africa and the Ebola epidemic in West Africa), this chapter explores what biomedical and anthropological ontologies of complexity have in common and the ways they are different. The chapter argues that an understanding of the points of friction between these forms of complexity helpsreveal the extent of the possibilities of an anthropological contribution to understanding – and helping in the management – of epidemics.