Contesting Measles and Vaccination in Pakistan

This book explores issues surrounding measles and vaccination in Pakistan. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research, it focuses on two major outbreaks in Sindh Province and on Pakistan's vaccination campaigns.

Inayat Ali is in charge of the Department of Public Health and Allied Sciences and Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He is also a Research Fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Preface by Merrill Singer Prologue Introduction 1 Many Anthropologies: Reflections on Theoretical Threads and the Medical Anthropology of Pakistan 2 Researchlogue: Design, Methodology, and Circumstances of Data collection 3 The Setting: From Sindh Province to the Sindhi Villages 4 Competing Healthcare Systems: Revisiting Medical Pluralism in Pakistan 5 Health and Illness: Socio-cultural Understanding 6 Local Rituals of Containment: Emic Perceptions and Practices around Measles 7 Social Dramas: Two Measles Outbreaks and Multiple Narratives in Pakistan 8 The Critical Geopolitical Events: Making Sense of Anti-Vaccination Sentiment 9 National and Global Rituals of Containment: Controversies, Contestations, and Mistrust Surrounding Vaccination in Pakistan 10 Measles Vaccine: From General to Particular 11 Creating an Anthropology of Vaccination: The International "Anti-Vaxx" Movement and Multiple Narratives Conclusions: Interrelations between Measle's Sacredness and Systematic Disparities Epilogue Bibliography