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COMMENTARY
As an anthropologist, the Covid-19 pandemic is a muse with a Janus face. On the one hand, the humanitarian crisis is so extreme that no one yet has control over the short or long-term social consequences of all this. On the other hand, it presents a large number of research channels. For the “hard” sciences, this is a minor problem. Finding direct solutions, like a vaccine, has a direct and immediate effect. For the social sciences, like anthropology, the situation is not so clear.
However, now, possibly more than ever, it is time to ask anthropological questions and offer ideas. Anthropologists have a long history of trying to make sense of the ways in which societies respond to medical emergencies. Since Ebola, HIV, cancer, and SARS, anthropologists have been at the forefront of asking the tough questions and, most importantly, offering difficult answers.
For example, Paul Richard’s work on Ebola in West Africa demonstrated how biomedical interventions were ineffective, arguing that a “people science” helped end the epidemic more effectively than internationally sponsored projects. My own work on HIV / AIDS in the Vhembe region of South Africa demonstrated that behavioral interventions were often counterproductive, leading many people on the ground to suspect that condoms could cause HIV, rather than help reduce infections.
This raises a series of anthropological questions that speak directly to the contemporary crisis in which we find ourselves.
There are logical reasons why people think biomedical experts hold the keys to a cure in any epidemic. Far from promoting “conspiracy theories,” anthropological approaches to this would consider the complex relationships between knowledge and experience that are central to understanding. why Some people think what they think.
The idea that condoms cause AIDS, or that the Covid-19 tests are infected with the virus, have clear parallels. However, responses so far have been blind to the historical anthropological record of social responses to medical emergencies. Behavioral interventions can only be effectively implemented, in any pandemic setting, by taking relevant anthropological research seriously.
The need to “anthropologize” is an essential component in the overall response to Covid-19. We must ask the difficult questions and try to articulate the difficult answers so that policy-makers can effectively implement them.
“Hard” science has a responsibility to find a biological way out of this pandemic. But let’s not assume that knowledge changes behavior. In fact, if anthropology has taught us anything, it is that humans can be fickle beasts. The risk can become attractive. As a recent master’s student in our department (who graduated with distinction) wrote about a worker’s shelter in Mamelodi: “Germs make us stronger.”
The humanities can still share the center stage in global and local responses to this crisis.
