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In
The Social Production of Crisis, Constance A. Nathanson and Henri Bergeron focus on the profoundly troubling story of how blood banks and blood products manufacturers and distributors, as well as the authorities charged with regulating them in France and the US, knowingly allowed blood contaminated with HIV to be distributed to hemophiliacs and others needing transfusions in the early to mid-1980s. Based on detailed, lively, and exciting comparative analysis, the book explains why this drama became a political crisis in France and not in the United States. The authors use this comparison to advance more general ideas of how political crises are socially produced and to raise questions about disease policy and politics in the two countries.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Preface
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: The Social Life of Blood, 1948-1980
- HIV/BLOOD STORIES
- Chapter 3: Act I - Before the Storm, 1981-85
- Chapter 4: Act II - The Storm Breaks, 1986-95
- Chapter 5: Mobilization of the Afflicted
- BLOOD EPISTEMOLOGY
- Chapter 6: Litigation
- Chapter 7: Compensation
- Chapter 8: Authoritative Retrospection
- REFLECTIONS
- Chapter 9: The Social Production of Political Crisis
- Chapter 10: Conclusion: Crisis and Change
- APPENDICES
- A. Chronologies
- B. Acronyms
- C. Sources
- Bibliography
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Constance A. Nathanson is currently Professor Emerita at Columbia University. She has over 45 years of experience in research on sociological dimensions of health and health policy. Her work over the past 30 years has focused on the history, politics, and sociology of public health policy and policy change in the United States and in its peer developed countries. Recent publications include articles theorizing policy and policy change in public health from a sociological perspective, more substantive articles on tobacco and gun control policy, the role of social movements in policy change, and essays on health inequalities, as well as a book, Disease Prevention as Social Change (2007), that describes and interprets public health policy shifts across the past two centuries in the United States, France, Great Britain, and Canada.
Henri Bergeron is a Senior CNRS Research Professor at the Center for Sociology of Organizations, Sciences Po, Director of the Chair "Transforming
organization" at Sciences Po. He is also co-director of the Health Department of Interdisciplinary Centre for the Evaluation of Public Policies (Centre of Excellence - LABEX), and Scientific coordinator of the Chair in Health Studies-Sciences Po. He is the director of the Master on "Organizational behavior and Human Resources" at Sciences Po and the Scientific Director of the "Management and Public Affairs" track at Sciences Po's School of Public Affairs. He teaches and conducts research on organizational behavior, institutional changes and drivers (including digital transformation), on institutional entrepreneurship, and leadership, and on power in and between organizations (in particular in the field of health).
Zusammenfassung
When does epidemic disease disrupt society to the point where it becomes a political crisis? In the early 1980s, almost unnoticed in the larger drama that was AIDS, over half of hemophiliacs and a large number of blood transfusion recipients were infected with toxic blood contaminated with HIV. The French public's "discovery" of this catastrophe in the early 1990s created a transformative political crisis; this same discovery in the United States went largely unnoticed.
In The Social Production of Crisis, Constance A. Nathanson and Henri Bergeron focus on a profoundly troubling story to present a detailed case comparative analysis not only of the catastrophe itself and its multiple retrospective interpretations but also of its intimate connection to the history and organization of blood as a consumer product in each country. They draw on secondary sources, archival research, and interviews with key players to provide a historical, political, and social reconstruction of the HIV contamination of the blood supply to answer the question of how and why disease morphed into crisis in France and not in the United States. They also raise questions about the curious immunity to human suffering as a policy engine in the United States, about the often reiterated weakness of civil society in France, and about theorizing alternative epidemic trajectories.
Investigating a series of morally shocking events, this book develops a sociological theory of how political crises are socially produced and raises questions about disease policy and politics in the US and France.
Zusatztext
This exemplary comparative analysis of parallel health crises in France and the United States draws on the best tools available to explain diverging national outcomes. Bringing together a sophisticated political sociology of the state, with cultural, network and strategic action analysis, Nathanson and Bergeron produce a brilliant account that will should inform many other future studies. This book should be widely read and discussed.
