BOOK

Controlling contagion : epidemics and institutions from the black death to Covid

Ogilvie, Sheilagh C., author

2025

Overview

\"From the Black Death to Covid, infectious diseases have killed far more people than hunger or violence, and they still cause 40 per cent of deaths in developing countries today. Epidemic disease is one of our best laboratories for exploring how societies deal with negative externalities-a cost not paid wholly by oneself, but instead discharged partly onto other people. Once an epidemic is raging, it raises three challenges for society which this book seeks to address. First, what institutions help care for the victims? Second, what institutions help societies recover from the huge economic devastation caused by mass disease, disability, and death? And finally, how are institutions themselves affected by epidemics? Analysing eight centuries of historical epidemics in Europe, the Middle East, China, India, Africa, and the Americas, economic historian Sheilagh Ogilvie investigates how six key social institutions (the market, the state, the community, religion, the guild, and the family) have shaped how people have dealt with the costs of contagion. She demonstrates that fighting epidemics requires resources, coercion, monitoring, exhortation, expertise, and nurturing. Each institution is good at mobilising some of these, but no institution is good at all. A social framework in which multiple institutions coexist has a better chance of tackling the multiplicity of challenges posed by contagion\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: Epidemics history / Communicable Disease Control history / Social Structure / Sociological Factors / History of Medicine / HISTORY - World / BUSINESS & ECONOMICS - Development - Economic Development
• ISBN: 9780691255569

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Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
RA649 .O35 2025	1	BOOK	WAITINSERT