The Cholera Stigma and the Challenge of Interdisciplinary Epistemology: From Bengal to Haiti

Abstract

For a century and a half cholera has been a stigmatizing disease. That the entire world was susceptible to it seemed merely to accentuate its association with Asia, and particularly with Bengal and its people. The recent epidemic in Haiti suggests that cholera still carries stigma. That stigma is the product of epistemic practices within an interdisciplinary and orientalist cholera science that took shape in the 1860s and 1870s, which have, without renewed scrutiny, prevailed largely uncontested until recent decades. Those practices involved an over-interpretation of the historical epidemiological work of John Macpherson by his colleague N. C. Macnamara. Recent research, recognizing the wide distribution and genetic instability of Vibrio cholerae, offers an alternative context for appreciating Macpherson's insights. This new program of interdisciplinary cholera research seems largely free of stigmatizing representations, but nor does it offer (or seek) a single and simple program of cholera prevention. The cholera case study invites reflection on the little-studied problem of epistemic accountability in interdisciplinary research, alerts us to questions of how disciplines are (and might be) made to cohere in policy-driven inquiries. The chief maxim is toward more explicit inclusion of the concept of multiple working hypotheses.