Global Health Studies Presents: A Revelatory Pandemic?

Disasters and epidemics have much in common. Both take form and magnitude at the intersection of social practices, policy, and non-human agents – be they fault lines, hurricanes, or viruses. Despite these commonalities, the anthropological engagement of both has, with a few notable exceptions, remained the focus of separate efforts in the research literature. This tendency came to an end with the COVID 19 Pandemic, when disaster anthropologists became highly productive in their written commentaries, research agendas, and applied work. This presentation examines what analytical possibilities are opened as well as the potential limitations of bringing the anthropology of disasters into conversation with the anthropology of epidemics.

Dr. Roberto E. Barrios is a Cultural Anthropologist who has researched disaster recovery and mitigation during the last three decades. He has conducted ethnographic work in Central America, Mexico, the United States, and the Caribbean. He is author of Governing Affect: Neoliberalism and Disaster Reconstruction and co-editor of the volumes Disaster Upon Disaster with Susanna Hoffman and A Revelatory Pandemic: Crisis, Agency, and COVID in Latin America with Virginia-García Acosta. He is currently the Doris Zemurray Stone Chair of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of New Orleans and co-editor of the Catastrophes in Context book series by Berghahn Press. His research interests include disaster governance, affect, community and environmental health, and the relationship between crisis and social change.

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