Fear, duty and the moralities of care: The Ebola 2014 threat

Abstract

Ebola has previously been predominantly isolated to African nations, with limited impact in OECD countries. In 2014 Ebola gained international visibility, based largely on the threat of it 'moving west'. Here we examine a group of Australian health professionals' accounts of the Ebola threat including their fears around exposure; the moralities underpinning their responses; the role of othering in framing the threat; and the significance of relations of mistrust. We posit that the threat of Ebola unsettled professional expectations (duty, sacrifice and exposure to risk), rights (choice and safety) and certainty (evidence or knowledge to guide practice). In making sense of the 2014 Ebola threat, the participants articulate dilemmas around human value, the contingency of professional duty and care, and transnational responsibility.

A brand storytelling approach to Covid-19's terrorealization: Cartographing the narrative space of a global pandemic

“…Social scientific analyses of pandemics (i.e. global lethally infectious diseases) have been focusing on the increasing ontological insecurity and risks that are attributed to precipitating globalization (Giddens, 1991), on the psychological aspects of fear, panic, and on moral controversies (Broom & Broom, 2017). Disease imagery is regularly employed in addressing such risks, as used to express concern for social order (Sontag, 1989).…”

Geographic charisma and the potential energy of Ebola

“…Ebola's elision with Africa as its ‘symbolic place’ (Terlouw , 335) has invoked a range of spatialised tropes, from a continent presented as a geographically undifferentiated source of risk, to a detailed series of places characterised by their exotically named outbreak locations, under‐resourced hospitals brimming with unimaginable sickness, culturally mysterious encounters between humans and potentially virus‐filled ecologies and the hunt for virus reservoirs across jungles and caves. Prior to 2013, Ebola outbreaks were small in scale, mostly rural and relatively quickly contained, yet narratives of the disease tended to incite the levels of fear and anxiety in the global north that far exceeded any likely risk horizons (Broom and Broom , Washer ). From the 1990s then, there was an ‘othering’ of Ebola to Africa which may have contained fear in the global north (Leach and Hewlett ), but also reinforced the virus's mystique by squarely associating it with far‐flung places out of the geographic purview of all but the most adventurous virus‐hunters (Lynteris ).…”

“…, Strong ) and the layers of meaning and symbolism that characterise the social mediation of biological events (Barbour and Huby , Sontag ). Crucially, it also contributes to the limited sociological engagement with the West African Ebola outbreak – especially when compared to the plethora of work within medical anthropology – and with global health more broadly (cf Broom and Broom , Herrick and Reubi ).…”

“…In so doing, this paper represents a significant contribution to sociological concerns with our pervasive 'culture of fear' (Furedi 2006, Glassner 1999, its uneasy relationship to risk (Gardner, 2008), the social production (and consumption) of epidemics (Dingwall et al 2013, Strong 1990) and the layers of meaning and symbolism that characterise the social mediation of biological events (Barbour andHuby 1998, Sontag 1979). Crucially, it also contributes to the limited sociological engagement with the West African Ebola outbreakespecially when compared to the plethora of work within medical anthropologyand with global health more broadly (cf Broom andBroom 2017, Herrick andReubi 2017).…”

‘And breathe…’? The sociology of health and illness in COVID‐19 time

“…Rationing is also taking place through hasty efforts at prioritisation of COVID‐19 against the other work that already filled hospitals – oncology, obstetrics, neurology and the rest. In these efforts different healthcare professionals are being asked to bear new responsibility in addition to the manifest risks of interacting with potential COVID‐19 patients (see work on these moral burdens in the case of Ebola by Broom and Broom ). All of this is familiar ground for readers of this journal and will be important sites for research in medical sociology.…”