Description du projet
Enquêter sur les écologies des maladies en Afrique de l’Ouest
Pourquoi des régions tropicales riches en biodiversité comme l’Afrique de l’Ouest, souvent des sites de ressources naturelles attirant des intérêts économiques occidentaux, ont-elles été identifiées comme des foyers de maladies émergentes dans la compréhension scientifique et populaire? Le projet VIRHIST, financé par l’UE, explorera les forces écologiques, économiques, politiques et sociales en jeu qui ont fait de certaines régions d’Afrique de l’Ouest des sites rentables d’extraction de ressources naturelles, des enclaves productives de recherche biomédicale et des zones chaudes pour les menaces de pandémie. En se concentrant sur l’histoire de la fièvre jaune, de l’hépatite B, d’Ebola et d’autres maladies infectieuses virales, le projet identifiera les conséquences prévues et imprévues du changement de paysage et des interventions biomédicales qui ont façonné l’émergence de ces maladies et impacté la vie et les moyens de subsistance des êtres humains et non-humains en Afrique de l’Ouest.
Objectif
Why have certain regions, like West Africa, rich in biodiversity, also become identified as emerging disease hotspots in scientific and popular understanding? VIRHIST aims to discern the ecological, economic, political and social forces at play that have simultaneously turned certain regions into profitable sites of natural resource extraction, productive enclaves of biomedical research, and hot zones of pandemic threats. At its core, the project seeks interrogate how Western economic interests tied to natural resource extraction in West Africa produced new understandings about the ecology of disease, while simultaneously creating new environments and species relationships--in the laboratory and on the plantation--that eliminated certain diseases, but also creating conditions of possibility for other pathogens to thrive. VIRHIST offers a groundbreaking approach, stimulating cross-fertilization and interaction across the fields of environmental history, medical history, and STS, to develop new perspectives on the history of environment and health. Through a focus on three bloodborne diseases—yellow fever, hepatitis B, and Ebola— at three distinct moments in West African history, VIRHIST advances the following research objectives: 1) Identify and substantiate the intended and unintended changes in disease ecologies produced through industrial plantations and biomedical interventions; 2) Interrogate the shifting ethics and economics driving emerging infectious disease research in West Africa in an age where biosecurity, surveillance, and pandemic anxieties mobilize significant resources and attention; and 3) Investigate the changing ethical, commercial, legal, and political standards that have shaped the collection and extraction of natural resources—from rubber, to chimpanzees, to viruses—in conservation and disease hotspots of the world.
Champ scientifique
Programme(s)
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
ERC-ADG - Advanced GrantInstitution d’accueil
80539 MUNCHEN
Allemagne