Representations: Between Uncertainty, Epistemology and Political Dominance

Abstract

Is Sierra Leone’s experience with the outbreak and its relationship with outside actors emblematic of the larger issues that have arisen around the management of the pandemic? An answer to this question depends on many internal and external indicators, including the global implications of tropical disease outbreaks, the contentions around peoples’ and governments’ understanding of these outbreaks, and the place of the affected countries in the global public health governance systems, as well as the interests of the intervening international actors. That said, this chapter positions these representations on two levels: the local and international; and discusses their associated positionalities and outcomes. The relevance of these levels of analysis lies in the fact that the impact of representation – how diseases are imagined, understood, and theorised – in the management of communicable diseases that are historically considered ‘Third World Diseases’ have not been fully researched. Thus, given this background, it is important that the issues that shaped the conditions that necessitated transnational interventions to contain the virus in Sierra Leone are critically examined against the backdrop of the competing discursive local and international representations of the Ebola Pandemic in Sub-Saharan Africa.