Periodic Reporting for period 2 - VIRHIST (Fragments of the Forest: Hot Zones, Disease Ecologies, and the Changing Landscape of Environment and Health in West Africa)
Reporting period: 2023-06-01 to 2024-11-30
The main objective of "Fragments of the Forest" has been to understand how changing scientific knowledge, natural resource extraction, and political economy have shaped scientific understandings of viral infectious diseases and their ecologies and transformed the Guinean Forests of West Africa into a hotspot of biodiversity and emerging infectious disease threats.
Our interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, historians, medical doctors, conservation biologists, and molecular biologists is working across a number of sites relevant to the changing landscape of environment and health in the Guinean Forests of West Africa. These include mining and rubber plantation concessions, biomedical research facilities, medical treatment centers, and protected forest areas. Through these sites, team members are investigating the valuation and capitalization of viruses such as Lassa fever and Ebola, the changing understandings of disease ecologies, the role of primates as a keystone species in virus research, and the emergence of the “hotspot” concept in biodiversity conservation and zoonotic disease research. Utilizing ethnographic and place-based methods, epidemiological and environmental data, and archival historical research, we seek to demonstrate how hotspots are inseparable from the infrastructures of extraction, knowledge regimes, and ecologies that make them and how, in turn, this designation alters relations among the living and nonliving occupants of the region.
Our project has proven extremely relevant in light of latest developments in the realm of infectious disease science, epidemic preparedness, and biosecurity thinking since the pandemic of Covid-19. The question of the origins of Covid-19 has formed a political arena where uncertainties, controversies, and accusations are currently having important consequences on policy decisions. Research on pathogen spillover is reforming past and existing collaborations between microbiologists, ecologists, and conservation scientists.
"Fragments of the Forest" throws light on the historical underpinnings of these alliances and their role in forging holistic frameworks of health. At the same time, it points to enduring fault lines across scientific disciplines, government agencies, and NGOs, as well as challenges, in trying to forge integrated approaches to human, animal, and environmental health that most benefit people and places that are the target of research and intervention.
Our interdisciplinary team of anthropologists, historians, medical doctors, conservation biologists, and molecular biologists is working across a number of sites relevant to the changing landscape of environment and health in the Guinean Forests of West Africa. These include mining and rubber plantation concessions, biomedical research facilities, medical treatment centers, and protected forest areas. Through these sites, team members are investigating the valuation and capitalization of viruses such as Lassa fever and Ebola, the changing understandings of disease ecologies, the role of primates as a keystone species in virus research, and the emergence of the “hotspot” concept in biodiversity conservation and zoonotic disease research. Utilizing ethnographic and place-based methods, epidemiological and environmental data, and archival historical research, we seek to demonstrate how hotspots are inseparable from the infrastructures of extraction, knowledge regimes, and ecologies that make them and how, in turn, this designation alters relations among the living and nonliving occupants of the region.
Our project has proven extremely relevant in light of latest developments in the realm of infectious disease science, epidemic preparedness, and biosecurity thinking since the pandemic of Covid-19. The question of the origins of Covid-19 has formed a political arena where uncertainties, controversies, and accusations are currently having important consequences on policy decisions. Research on pathogen spillover is reforming past and existing collaborations between microbiologists, ecologists, and conservation scientists.
"Fragments of the Forest" throws light on the historical underpinnings of these alliances and their role in forging holistic frameworks of health. At the same time, it points to enduring fault lines across scientific disciplines, government agencies, and NGOs, as well as challenges, in trying to forge integrated approaches to human, animal, and environmental health that most benefit people and places that are the target of research and intervention.
The recruitment and hiring of a postdoc and three PhD students, the latter of whom are all from West Africa, has brought together an interdisciplinary team trained in the fields of history, medical anthropology, medicine, conservation biology, and molecular biology. The professional expertise, language skills, and research experience of team members has enabled us to adopt a more bioregional approach to the project that extends research beyond Liberia into Guinea and Nigeria and offers a more ambitious, comparative investigation into the past and present convergence of infectious disease research, biodiversity conservation, and resource extraction in the Guinean Forests of West Africa over the last one-hundred years.
Collectively, we have conducted more than 300 formal and informal interviews with conservation biologists, veterinary scientists, health professionals, animal caretakers, retired workers, mining staff, and elders in Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, Europe, and the United States. We have also undertaken more than 36 months of fieldwork in Liberia, Guinea, and Nigeria. In-depth research in archival collections on three continents has also made visible the close historical ties between infrastructures of resource extraction and virus hunting, wildlife sampling, and disease surveillance in the making of the Guinean Forests of West Africa into a hotspot of biodiversity and emerging infectious disease threats.
A workshop held in April 2024 on “Extraction and Its Ecologies” brought together an interdisciplinary group of 29 international scholars from the humanities and social sciences working on issues of biodiversity, health, zoonotic diseases, and/or toxic pollution in zones of extraction in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. A series of articles on mining and conservation in West Africa with scholars from NYU for "Africa is a Country", as well as a field course in Kenya on the ethnographic traces of modernity and its afterlives with the University of Oslo, have emerged out of this gathering.
Our work on virus research and the primate trade in West Africa has also resulted in a collaboration and forthcoming joint publication in the journal "Isis" on post/colonial ecologies of extraction, conservation, and care of primates in the history of biomedical infrastructures.
To date, we have delivered 29 presentations at universities, government agencies, and professional meetings, and have 5 publications in print, 2 in press, and one book under contract.
Collectively, we have conducted more than 300 formal and informal interviews with conservation biologists, veterinary scientists, health professionals, animal caretakers, retired workers, mining staff, and elders in Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria, Europe, and the United States. We have also undertaken more than 36 months of fieldwork in Liberia, Guinea, and Nigeria. In-depth research in archival collections on three continents has also made visible the close historical ties between infrastructures of resource extraction and virus hunting, wildlife sampling, and disease surveillance in the making of the Guinean Forests of West Africa into a hotspot of biodiversity and emerging infectious disease threats.
A workshop held in April 2024 on “Extraction and Its Ecologies” brought together an interdisciplinary group of 29 international scholars from the humanities and social sciences working on issues of biodiversity, health, zoonotic diseases, and/or toxic pollution in zones of extraction in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. A series of articles on mining and conservation in West Africa with scholars from NYU for "Africa is a Country", as well as a field course in Kenya on the ethnographic traces of modernity and its afterlives with the University of Oslo, have emerged out of this gathering.
Our work on virus research and the primate trade in West Africa has also resulted in a collaboration and forthcoming joint publication in the journal "Isis" on post/colonial ecologies of extraction, conservation, and care of primates in the history of biomedical infrastructures.
To date, we have delivered 29 presentations at universities, government agencies, and professional meetings, and have 5 publications in print, 2 in press, and one book under contract.
Our project is breaking new ground in illuminating the shifting infrastructure of global health in an era of zoonotic disease pandemics. It highlights the growing role played by extractive industries, ecotourism, and conservation projects as environmental dimensions are increasingly brought to bear on understandings of health. It demonstrates how spaces of endangerment, marked by biodiversity loss and zoonotic disease threats, accrue value at a time when market mechanisms, from offsets to ecotourism, are seen by organizations like the World Bank as tools of nature conservation and pandemic prevention.
The concept of “the fragment” has unexpectedly emerged as a central analytic framework in our project, which we continue to develop. The Guineans Forest of West Africa have been fragmented into pieces of worth—iron ore and timber, rare toads and viruses, ephemeral jobs and cash-crop farms—in the ever-changing production and extraction of value from nature. Fragments, upon which, we argue, the notion of the hotspot depends, require care and containment. In West Africa, as private businesses and the state reconsidered social and civic responsibilities, modes of care morphed from provision of worker welfare in the post-WWII period to more recent neoliberal care of the more-than-human. We hold that the governance of fragments, replete with notions of repair and restoration, is both the epitome of and a litmus test for late extractive industries.
By the project’s end, we expect to have completed:
1) A workshop devoted to critical inquiry across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences of the hotspot concept, in partnership with LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies, leading to a special journal issue.
2) Publication of a Focus Section issue of the journal "Isis" on “Trafficking in Primates: Post/Colonial Ecologies of Extraction, Conservation, and Care.”
3). A series in the opinion and news website "Africa is a Country" on the intersections of mining and conservation in West Africa.
4) A theoretical piece on the concept of the fragment, aimed at scholars in anthropology and the environmental humanities.
5) A feature-length documentary that explores the fragility and determination of life in the Upper Guinean Forests and focuses on a younger generation of West African biologists, ecoguides, geologists, park rangers, and local community members engaged with the repair, resilience, and ongoing futures of this important tropical rainforest ecosystem.
6) Two books and three PhD theses
The concept of “the fragment” has unexpectedly emerged as a central analytic framework in our project, which we continue to develop. The Guineans Forest of West Africa have been fragmented into pieces of worth—iron ore and timber, rare toads and viruses, ephemeral jobs and cash-crop farms—in the ever-changing production and extraction of value from nature. Fragments, upon which, we argue, the notion of the hotspot depends, require care and containment. In West Africa, as private businesses and the state reconsidered social and civic responsibilities, modes of care morphed from provision of worker welfare in the post-WWII period to more recent neoliberal care of the more-than-human. We hold that the governance of fragments, replete with notions of repair and restoration, is both the epitome of and a litmus test for late extractive industries.
By the project’s end, we expect to have completed:
1) A workshop devoted to critical inquiry across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences of the hotspot concept, in partnership with LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies, leading to a special journal issue.
2) Publication of a Focus Section issue of the journal "Isis" on “Trafficking in Primates: Post/Colonial Ecologies of Extraction, Conservation, and Care.”
3). A series in the opinion and news website "Africa is a Country" on the intersections of mining and conservation in West Africa.
4) A theoretical piece on the concept of the fragment, aimed at scholars in anthropology and the environmental humanities.
5) A feature-length documentary that explores the fragility and determination of life in the Upper Guinean Forests and focuses on a younger generation of West African biologists, ecoguides, geologists, park rangers, and local community members engaged with the repair, resilience, and ongoing futures of this important tropical rainforest ecosystem.
6) Two books and three PhD theses