Abstract
A disease outbreak is an emergent product of social and ecological processes. To more fully understand disease outbreaks and their response, we must therefore consider how these dual processes interact in specific locales within the context of an increasingly urbanized world. As such, in this paper we examine the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak and its response in West Africa by adopting the lenses of two approaches that are usually treated separately – namely, urban political ecology (UPE) and urban political pathology (UPP). The UPE approach sheds light on how the material/biophysical basis of the EVD outbreak was influenced by the socio-political-economic and vice versa. The UPP approach gives us insight into how the EVD response was influenced by broader socio-political-economic forces, particularly the historical legacy of colonialism. Through the adoption of this dual lens we are able to gain greater insights and a more comprehensive understanding of the EVD outbreak and response in West Africa.
Highlights
If Urban Political Ecology (UPE) is, at its core, about urban life, infectious disease, its origin, trajectory and the response to it, must be among its prime occupations
Taking up Lefebvre’s dialectical method that builds on the contradiction of general urbanization and the end of the city, this paper looks at the ways in which a ‘spatialized political ecology’ (Connolly et al, 2020) can help understand the challenges a generalized urban will encounter and how it can contribute to mitigating the impact of disease outbreaks that appear endemic to emerging urban society
We focus on how some of the empirical implications of the study can be subjected to the lenses of UPE and urban political pathology (UPP).3
Summary
If Urban Political Ecology (UPE) is, at its core, about urban life, infectious disease, its origin, trajectory and the response to it, must be among its prime occupations. We discuss the political ecologies and the political pathologies of urbanization in West Africa – Liberia and Sierra Leone to be specific – where an outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) affected more than 30,000 in 2014/15, with the tragic loss of over 11,000 lives (Abdullah and Rashid, 2017: 2).
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