Do states have a duty to prevent infectious disease outbreaks from spreading beyond their borders? The fields of global health and international relations are increasingly concerned with the responsibilities of nations to respond to disease outbreaks in a way that safeguards their neighbors as well as the broader international community. In Containing Contagion, Sara E. Davies focuses on one of the world's most pivotal (and riskiest) regions in the field of global health—Southeast Asia, which in recent years has responded to a wave of emerging and endemic infectious disease outbreaks ranging from Nipah, SARS, and avian flu to dengue and Japanese encephalitis. Between 2005 and 2010, Davies explains, Southeast Asian states, despite having vastly different health system capacities and political systems, repeatedly committed to pursue a collective approach to the communication of outbreaks. Davies draws on newly gathered data and extensive field interviews to explore how these states implemented the revised International Health Regulations (IHR) through the deliberate alignment of political interests and regional cooperation. Examining why these Southeast Asian states adopted a collective approach, Davies also describes the complications that ensued and traces the consequences of this approach. The first book to explore what problems exist in the relationship between international relations and health, Containing Contagion frames contrasting views of global health agency within the current crises that are facing global health. Providing an immediate, contemporary example of a region networking its response to disease outbreak events, this insightful book will appeal to global health governance scholars, students, and practitioners.

A better and healthier time to be alive than ever -- An unhealthy country -- An unhealthy world -- Who we are, the foundational forces -- Where we live, work, and play -- Politics, power, and money -- Compassion -- Social, racial, and economic justice -- Health as a public good -- Understanding what matters most -- Working in complexity and doubt -- Humility and informing the public conversation.

During the Antebellum era, thousands of free black sailors were arrested for violating the Negro Seamen Acts. In retelling the harrowing experiences of free black sailors, Moral Contagion highlights the central roles that race and international diplomacy played in the development of American citizenship.

Picking up where The Tipping Point leaves off, respected journalist Lee Daniel Kravetz’s Strange Contagion is a provocative look at both the science and lived experience of social contagion. In 2009, tragedy struck the town of Palo Alto: A student from the local high school had died by suicide by stepping in front of an oncoming train. Grief-stricken, the community mourned what they thought was an isolated loss. Until, a few weeks later, it happened again. And again. And again. In six months, the high school lost five students to suicide at those train tracks. A recent transplant to the community and a new father himself, Lee Daniel Kravetz’s experience as a science journalist kicked in: what was causing this tragedy? More important, how was it possible that a suicide cluster could develop in a community of concerned, aware, hyper-vigilant adults? The answer? Social contagion. We all know that ideas, emotions, and actions are communicable—from mirroring someone’s posture to mimicking their speech patterns, we are all driven by unconscious motivations triggered by our environment. But when just the right physiological, psychological, and social factors come together, we get what Kravetz calls a "strange contagion:" a perfect storm of highly common social viruses that, combined, form a highly volatile condition. Strange Contagion is simultaneously a moving account of one community’s tragedy and a rigorous investigation of social phenomenon, as Kravetz draws on research and insights from experts worldwide to unlock the mystery of how ideas spread, why they take hold, and offer thoughts on our responsibility to one another as citizens of a globally and perpetually connected world.

Brings together new research that lays out the current state of contagion studies, from the perspective of media studies, monster studies, and the medical humanities. Offers fresh perspectives on contagion studies from disciplines such as the social sciences and the medical humanities, introducing new methods of collaboration and avenues of research, and demonstrating how these disciplines have already been working in parallel for several decades. Covers a wide variety of international media and contexts, including literature, film, television, public policy, and social networks. Includes key, recent case studies (including public health documents and the popular Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet) that have not yet been analysed anywhere else in the field. Bucks the current trend of going back to plague literature and historical plagues in the search for meaning to address current and late-20th century epidemics, diseases, and monsters.

No sooner had the Asian crisis broken out in 1997 than the witch-hunt started. With great indignation every Asian economy pointed fingers. They were innocent bystanders. The fundamental reason for the crisis was this or that - most prominently contagion - but also the decline in exports of the new commodities (high-tech goods), the steep rise of the dollar, speculators, etc. The prominent question, of course, is whether contagion could really have been the key factor and, if so, what are the channels and mechanisms through which it operated in such a powerful manner. The question is obvious because until 1997, Asia's economies were generally believed to be immensely successful, stable and well managed. This question is of great importance not only in understanding just what happened, but also in shaping policies. In a world of pure contagion, i.e. when innocent bystanders are caught up and trampled by events not of their making and when consequences go far beyond ordinary international shocks, countries will need to look for better protective policies in the future. In such a world, the international financial system will need to change in order to offer better preventive and reactive policy measures to help avoid, or at least contain, financial crises.

Contagion explores cultural responses of infectious diseases and their biomedical management over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also investigates the use of 'contagion' as a concept in postmodern research.

Fans of Douglas Hofstadter, Daniel Bennet, and Richard Dawkins (as well as science buffs and readers of Wired Magazine) will revel in Aaron Lynch’s groundbreaking examination of memetics--the new study of how ideas and beliefs spread. What characterizes a meme is its capacity for displacing rival ideas and beliefs in an evolutionary drama that determines and changes the way people think. Exactly how do ideas spread, and what are the factors that make them genuine thought contagions? Why, for instance, do some beliefs spread throughout society, while others dwindle to extinction? What drives those intensely held beliefs that spawn ideological and political debates such as views on abortion and opinions about sex and sexuality?By drawing on examples from everyday life, Lynch develops a conceptual basis for understanding memetics. Memes evolve by natural selection in a process similar to that of Genes in evolutionary biology. What makes an idea a potent meme is how effectively it out-propagates other ideas. In memetic evolution, the "fittest ideas” are not always the truest or the most helpful, but the ones best at self replication.Thus, crash diets spread not because of lasting benefit, but by alternating episodes of dramatic weight loss and slow regain. Each sudden thinning provokes onlookers to ask, "How did you do it?” thereby manipulating them to experiment with the diet and in turn, spread it again. The faster the pounds return, the more often these people enter that disseminating phase, all of which favors outbreaks of the most pathogenic diets. Like a software virus traveling on the Internet or a flu strain passing through a city, thought contagions proliferate by programming for their own propagation. Lynch argues that certain beliefs spread like viruses and evolve like microbes, as mutant strains vie for more adherents and more hosts. In its most revolutionary aspect, memetics asks not how people accumulate ideas, but how ideas accumulate people. Readers of this intriguing theory will be amazed to discover that many popular beliefs about family, sex, politics, religion, health, and war have succeeded by their "fitness” as thought contagions.

The first book in the spine-tingling Dark Matter trilogy about the frightening effects of a biological experiment gone wrong. An epidemic is sweeping the country. It spreads fast, mercilessly. Everyone will be infected. . . . It is only a matter of time. You are now under quarantine. Young teen Callie might have been one of the first to survive the disease, but unfortunately she didn't survive the so-called treatment. She was kidnapped and experimented upon at a secret lab, one that works with antimatter. When she breaks free of her prison, she unleashes a wave of destruction. Meanwhile her older brother Kai is looking for her, along with his smart new friend Shay, who was the last to see Callie alive. Amid the chaos of the spreading epidemic, the teens must find the source of disease. Could Callie have been part of an experiment in biological warfare? Who is behind the research? And more importantly, is there a cure?

Edgar Award Nominee for Best Young Adult Mystery Perfect for fans of Madeleine Roux, Jonathan Maberry, and horror films like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, this pulse-pounding, hair-raising, utterly terrifying novel is the first in a duology from the critically acclaimed author of the Taken trilogy. After receiving a distress call from a drill team on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is sent into deep space to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission. When they arrive, they find the planet littered with the remains of the project—including its members’ dead bodies. As they try to piece together what could have possibly decimated an entire project, they discover that some things are best left buried—and some monsters are only too ready to awaken. ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CONTAGION: “Gripping, thrilling and terrifying in equal measures, Contagion is the perfect intersection of science fiction and horror—I couldn’t look away.”—Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of Illuminae and Unearthed “Few understand the true horror that lies in the empty unknown of space, but Erin Bowman nails it in Contagion. Read this one with the lights on!”—Beth Revis, New York Times bestselling author of the Across the Universe series and Star Wars: Rebel Rising “Erin Bowman’s Contagion is everything I want in my science fiction: a cast of smart characters on a desperate rescue mission forced to confront an elusive and unstoppable enemy. I absolutely loved this layered and thrilling adventure and can’t wait to dive back into this world again.”—Veronica Rossi, New York Times bestselling author of the Under the Never Sky series