Review: Didier Fassin (Ed.) (2017). If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography

Didier Fassin's new edited collection brings together public anthropologists and sociologists who reflect on the challenges and stakes related to the dissemination, promotion, reception, and utilization of their ethnographic research. The book centers on two questions. First, what kind of difference does ethnography make when research findings are transported into the public domain? Second, what happens in this encounter between ethnographers and their publics? In order to address these questions, contributors offer ethnographic accounts of the public reception of their ethnographic research. As the book illustrates the variety of public encounters and diverse issues that arise in the process of ethnography "going public," it offers valuable contributions to multidisciplinary discussions related to ethnographers' political and ethical commitments.Didier Fassin bringt in seinem neuen Buch Anthropolog/innen und Soziolog/innen zusammen, um über die Verbreitung und Nutzung ihrer ethnografischen Forschungsarbeiten und damit verbundene Herausforderungen zu diskutieren. Zwei Fragen sind zentral: Welche Besonderheiten resultieren für ethnografische Forschung, wenn ihre Ergebnisse veröffentlicht werden? Und was genau geschieht bei der Begegnung zwischen Ethnograf/innen und ihrem Publikum? Zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen liefern die Autor/innen ethnografische Beschreibungen der öffentlichen Rezeption ihrer Studien. Da in dem Buch eine große Bandbreite solcher Begegnungen und zahlreiche Besonderheiten des going public skizziert werden, leistet es wesentliche Beiträge zu multidisziplinären Reflexionen über mit Ethnografie verbundene ethische und politische Fragen

The challenges of technological innovation in HIV

The challenges of transferring biomedical advances and non-biomedical technological innovations in HIV prevention and treatment to the field, are a theme of this year’s XVII International AIDS Conference. In the HIV field, innovations are often understood in exclusively biomedical or psychosocial terms. Related to these understandings are well-worn disciplinary distinctions. Thus vaccines and drug treatments are typically understood as biotechnological. They are seen as the proper preserve of laboratory studies and clinical trials that are charged with the creation of biotechnologies to protect human bodies from HIV infection or reduce damaging effects when infection has occurred. By contrast, innovations in safer-sex campaigns and other forms of behavioural prevention are generally considered the mainstay of the social sciences. Research from these fields is intended to provide insights into the beliefs and practices that might inform policy and programmes aimed at individual behaviours. Interdisciplinary collaborations generally involve social-science study of human experiences of and responses to biomedical phenomena. Good examples are the studies of adherence to HIV antiretroviral drug treatments and studies of the effect of antiretrovirals on concepts of risk and risk behaviours. In such studies, the innovation is often taken to be separate from the individuals that participate in it. The goal is to understand how the initiative affects or is experienced by participants

International Epidemic Intelligence at the Institut de Veille Sanitaire, France

The French Institute for Public Health Surveillance monitors health events of potential international importance occurring worldwide to provide timely warning to French health authorities. We reviewed the nature and place of occurrence of the last 200 events. From an individual country’s perspective, the need for multiple sources is emphasized

Corporate contact tracing as a pandemic response

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a steady stream of propositions from tech giants and start-ups alike has furnished us with the idea that GPS- or Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing apps are a vital part of the pandemic response. This commentary considers these apps as ‘corporate contact tracing’, emphasizing the private-sector role that such developments imply. We first discuss corporate contact tracing’s potential to de-center the power of public health authorities. Then, using the frames of surveillance capitalism and disaster capitalism, we suggest how corporate contact tracing might feed the rise of corporate power in the public sphere. We question its capacity to address structural inequalities and to foster a social justice vision of public health. And, we wonder whether corporate contact tracing might intensify the effects of discriminatory design and algorithmic oppression. We conclude by calling for a discussion of this technology beyond questions of privacy and efficacy

XVII International AIDS Conference: From Evidence to Action - Social, behavioural and economic science and policy and political science

AIDS 2008 firmly established stigma and discrimination as fundamental priorities in the push for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support. Conference sessions and discussions reinforced the tangible negative effects of stigma on national legislation and policies. A strong theme throughout the conference was the need to replace prevention interventions that focus exclusively on individual behaviour change or biomedical prevention interventions with "combination prevention" approaches that address both individual and structural factors that increase vulnerability to HIV infection

Timeliness of Nongovernmental versus Governmental Global Outbreak Communications

To compare the timeliness of nongovernmental and governmental communications of infectious disease outbreaks and evaluate trends for each over time, we investigated the time elapsed from the beginning of an outbreak to public reporting of the event. We found that governmental sources improved the timeliness of public reporting of infectious disease outbreaks during the study period