Current accounts of antimicrobial resistance

Stabilisation, Individualisation and Antibiotics as Infrastructure

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5848112
AutoresClare Chandler (0000-0001-6499-7522, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen5
Número1
Fecha de publicación2019-05-21
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPalgrave Communications (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2055-1045 • E-ISSN: 2055-1045
EditorialPalgrave Macmillan (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1057/s41599-019-0263-4
PMID31157116
OpenAlexW2945147590
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas93
Referencias citadas76

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the latest issues to galvanise political and financial investment as an emerging global health threat. This paper explores the construction of AMR as a problem, following three lines of analysis. First, an examination of some of the ways in which AMR has become an object for action-through defining, counting and projecting it. Following Lakoff's work on emerging infectious diseases, the paper illustrates that while an 'actuarial' approach to AMR may be challenging to stabilise due to definitional and logistical issues, it has been successfully stabilised through a 'sentinel' approach that emphasises the threat of AMR. Second, the paper draws out a contrast between the way AMR is formulated in terms of a problem of connectedness-a 'One Health' issue-and the frequent solutions to AMR being focused on individual behaviour. The paper suggests that AMR presents an opportunity to take seriously connections, scale and systems but that this effort is undermined by the prevailing tendency to reduce health issues to matters for individual responsibility. Third, the paper takes AMR as a moment of infrastructural inversion (Bowker and Star) when antimicrobials and the work they do are rendered more visible. This leads to the proposal of antibiotics as infrastructure-part of the woodwork that we take for granted, and entangled with our ways of doing life, in particular modern life. These explorations render visible the ways social, economic and political frames continue to define AMR and how it may be acted upon, which opens up possibilities for reconfiguring AMR research and action

Social connectedness · Antibiotic Use and Resistance · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk · Vaccine Coverage and Hesitancy