The Common Cold, Influenza and Immunity in Post-Pandemic Times: Lay representations of Self and Other among older people in Sweden
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/hcs.2015.200Schlagworte:
common cold, influenza, immune system, pandemics, SwedenAbstract
The need for new knowledge about lay representations of contagions, immunity, vaccination, common colds, and influenza has become clear after the A(H1N1) pandemic and the resulting challenges regarding pandemic preparedness. This article analyses written responses from 67 persons, mostly women, to a semi-structured questionnaire about colds and the flu. Three themes are discussed: “Common cold and flus as ritualized experiences”, “Me, my body, and my immune defense”, and “Regulations of space, place, and behaviors.” Overall, the narratives were about trust, value, and respect in the body, in lived experiences, and in the capacity to ‘help’ and ‘nurture’ the immune system, but also about the feeling of powerlessness when perceiving inadequacies in other people’s parallel interpretations and actions. Pandemic preparedness policies need to acknowledge the multiple ‘immunity talk’ in the responses to create productive, ongoing relations with the ‘Other’, that rely on people’s trust and resilience, rather than on people´s fear.
Literaturhinweise
References
Anderson, W. (2014) Getting ahead of one’s self? The common culture of immunology and philosophy. Isis, 2014, 105: 606-616.
Baer, R.D.et al. (2008) Cross-cultural perspectives on physician and lay models of the common cold. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 22, Issue 2: 148-166.
Baylis, F., Kenny, N.P., Sherwin, S. (2008) A relational account of public health ethics. Public Health Ethics, 1(3): 196-209.
Brison, S.J. (1997) Outliving oneself. In: Meyers, D.T. (ed.) Feminists Rethink the Self. Westview Press: 12-39.
Cedraschi, C. et al. (2013) Representations of influenza and influenza-like illness in the community – a qualitative study. BMC Family Practice 14:15
Church, J. (2997) Ownership and the body. In: Meyers, D.T. (ed.) Feminists Rethink the Self. Westview Press: 85-103.
Cohen, E. (2009) A body worth defending: Immunity, biopolitics, and the apotheosis of the modern body. Duke University Press.
Davis, M. et al. (2015) Immunity, biopolitics and pandemics: public and individual responses to the threat of life. Body & Society. doi 10.1177/1357034X14556155
Evans, M.R, et al. (2007) A qualitative study of lay beliefs about influenza immunisation in older people. British Journal of General Practice 57:352-358.
Farmer, Paul (2001) Infection and Inequalities. The modern plagues. University of California Press, CA.
Greenhough, B. (2012a) Where species meet and mingle: endemic human-virus relations, embodied communication and more-than-human agency at the Common Cold Unit 1946-90. Cultural geographies 19(3): 281-301.
Greenhough, B. (2012b) Room with a rhinovirus? Blurring the boundaries between research and a therapeutic space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, NS 37: 402-417.
HEG Expert Group (2011) Science, H1N1 and society: Towards a more pandemic-resilient society. Belgium, Brussels.
Helman, C. (1978) “Feed a cold, starve a fever” – folk models of infection in an English suburban community and their relation to medical treatment. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 2:107-137.
Jamieson, M. (2015) The politics of immunity: Reading Cohen through Canguilhem and New materialism. Body & Society. DOI 10.1177/1357034X14551843
Janeway, C.A. et al. (2001) Immunobiology 5th Edition. The immune system in health and disease. New York: Garland Science.
Klein, B. (2003) Nm 223. Personlig hygien. Reflektioner kring frågelistor, meddelarsvar och vetenskap. In: Nilsson, B.G, Waldetoft, D., Westergren, C. (eds.) Frågelist och berättarglädje. Om frågelistor som forskningsmetod och folklig genre. Stockholm, Sweden: Nordiska museets förlag: 9-16.
Kucharski A.J. et al. (2015) Estimating the life course of influenza A(H3N2) Antibody responses from cross-sectional data. PLoS Biol 13(3):e 1002082. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002082
Lakoff, A. (2012) The generic biothreat, or how we became unprepared. Cultural Anthropology, 3 (3): 399-428.
Linger, D.T. (2005) Anthropology through a double lens. Public and personal worlds in human theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Lohm, D., Davis, M., Flowers, P. & Stephenson, N. (2015) ‘Fuzzy’ virus: indeterminate influenza biology, diagnosis and surveillance in the risk ontologies of the general public in time of pandemics. Health, Risk & Society, 17:2: 115-131.
Lupton, D. (2003) Medicine as culture. Illness, disease, and the body in Western societies. Second Edition. London: Sage Publications.
MacPhail, T. (2010) A predictable unpredictability. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the concept of ‘strategic uncertainty’ within global health. Behemoth. A Journal on Civilisation. Issue Nr. 3: 57-77.
Medical Products Agency. http://www.lakemedelsverket.se/Alla-nyheter/NYHETER-2011/Rapport-fran-fallinventeringsstudie-om-Pandemrix-och-narkolepsi/
Moore, S (2010) Is the healthy body gendered? Toward a feminist critique of the new paradigm of health. Body & Society. Vol. 16(2): 95-118.
Napier, A.D. (2002) The age of immunology. Conceiving a future in an alienating world. University of Chicago Press.
Napier, A.D. (2012) Nonself help: How immunology might reframe the Enlightenment. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 27, Issue 1: 122-137.
Newman, J.I, Shields, R. and McLeod, C.M. (2015) The MRSA epidemic and/as fluid biopolitics. Body & Society, doi 10.1177/1357034X14551844
Nordiska museet. Frågelistor. (Questionnaries)
http://www.nordiskamuseet.se/samlingar/insamling/fragelistor/fragelistor-nm-serien
Prior, L. (2003) Belief, knowledge and expertise: the emergence of the lay expert in medical sociology. Sociology of Health & Illness. Vol. 25 Silver Anniversary Issue: 41-57.
Prior, L., Evans. M.R., & Prout. H. (2011) Talking about colds and flu: The lay diagnosis of two common illnesses among older British people. Social Science & Medicine 73: 922-928.
Rosenberg, C.E. (2002) The Tyranny of Diagnosis: Specific Entities and Individual Experience. The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 80 No. 2: 237-260.
Socialstyrelsen (2011). A(H1N1). An evaluation of Sweden’s preparations for and managements of the pandemic. Stockholm, Sweden: The National Board of Health and Welfare.
Tyrrell, D., Fielder, M. (2002) Cold wars. The fight against the common cold. Oxford University Press.
Wald, P. (2008) Contagious. Cultures, carriers, and the outbreak narrative. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
World Health Organization (2010) Sex, gender and influenza. WHO Press.
Downloads
Veröffentlicht
Ausgabe
Rubrik
Lizenz
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
