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University of Sussex

Comparison of Social Resistance to Ebola Response in Sierra Leone and Guinea Suggests Explanations Lie in Political Configurations not Culture

Description

Sierra Leone and Guinea share broadly similar cultural worlds, straddling the societies of the Upper Guinea Coast with Islamic West Africa. There was, however, a notable difference in their reactions to the Ebola epidemic. As the epidemic spread in Guinea, acts of violent or everyday resistance to the outbreak. Reducing spread repeatedly followed, undermining public health attempts to contain the crisis. In Sierra Leone, defiant resistance was rarer.

Instead of looking to ‘culture’ to explain patterns of social resistance (as was common in the media and in the discourse of responding public health authorities) a comparison between Sierra Leone and Guinea suggests that explanations lie in divergent political practice and lived experiences of the state. In particular, the structures of state authority through which the national epidemic response was organised integrated very differently with trusted institutions in each country. Predicting and addressing social responses to epidemic control measures should assess such political-trust configurations when planning interventions.

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DETAILS

Publication

2016

Authors

A. Wilkinson, J. Fairhead

Emergency

Ebola

Scope

Social science

Language

English

Region

West & Central Africa

Keywords

FAQ, Guinea, Sierra Leone, social science, politics, disease management, research, Behaviours, Disease outbreaks, Emergency response, Ebola