Ebola and the narrative of mistrust

Abstract

Transmission of Ebola virus in West Africa and the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo has been traced to local people's belief in misinformation and low trust in institutions. But such analyses-and others-of Ebola transmission employ bourgeois empiricist methodologies and draw from a mental map whose contours are shaped by coloniality. By tracing human rights failings to the impoverished discursive infrastructure of objectivist epidemiology, we can transform global health by transforming its representations.