Diseased States
Paperback
Release Date:31 Jul 2020
ISBN:9781625345073
Hardcover
Release Date:28 Jun 2020
ISBN:9781625345066
Diseased States
Epidemic Control in Britain and the United States
University of Massachusetts Press
Outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, MERS, coronavirus, and pandemic influenza are brutal reminders of the dangers of infectious disease. Comparing the development of disease control in Britain and the United States, from the 1793 yellow fever outbreak in Philadelphia to the H1N1 panics of more recent times, Diseased States provides a blueprint for managing pandemics in the twenty-first century.
To understand why these two nations have handled contemporary disease threats in such different ways, Charles Allan McCoy examines when and how disease control measures were adopted in each country from the nineteenth century onward, which medical theory of disease was dominant at the time, and where disease control was located within the state apparatus. Particular starting conditions put Britain and the United States on distinct trajectories of institutionalization that led to their respective systems of disease control. As McCoy shows, even the seemingly objective matter of contagion is deeply enmeshed in social and political realities, and by developing unique systems of biopower to control the spread of disease, Britain and the United States have established different approaches of exerting political control over citizens' lives and bodies.
To understand why these two nations have handled contemporary disease threats in such different ways, Charles Allan McCoy examines when and how disease control measures were adopted in each country from the nineteenth century onward, which medical theory of disease was dominant at the time, and where disease control was located within the state apparatus. Particular starting conditions put Britain and the United States on distinct trajectories of institutionalization that led to their respective systems of disease control. As McCoy shows, even the seemingly objective matter of contagion is deeply enmeshed in social and political realities, and by developing unique systems of biopower to control the spread of disease, Britain and the United States have established different approaches of exerting political control over citizens' lives and bodies.
This comparative study elucidates the contrasting philosophies between Britain and the US concerning the history of the state's role in public health, beginning with the outbreak of yellow fever in 1793, and how these differing approaches continued to inform modern-era policies on AIDS, SARS, and Ebola . . . Recommended.'—CHOICE
'It is an achievement of McCoy's book, to open up the field for a systematic reconsideration of the ways of knowing, the styles of state action and the bureaucratic practices, with which outbreak control has shaped the idea of the modern state across and beyond specific diseases.'—Social History of Medicine
'Charles McCoy’s Diseased States takes a sweeping view of the history of disease and epidemic response in Great Britain and the United States to investigate how and why individual countries develop different responses to disease outbreaks.'—H-Net Reviews
'Diseased States is insightful, original, and a great reminder of how the pursuit of public health is not as beneficent as it might seem and not immune to the vices of the public itself.'—Kenneth Kirkwood, associate professor of health studies at Western University
'A sophisticated comparative analysis of the differing responses to infectious diseases in Britain and the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, Diseased States is a significant contribution to the literature.'—Magdalena Szaflarski, associate professor of sociology and scientist in the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama at Birmingham
CHARLES ALLAN MCCOY is assistant professor of sociology at the State University of New York Plattsburgh.
