Vaccination as Crossroad and Focal PointWorkshop with Prof. Dr. Eberhard Wolff

16 June 2023, by Tobias Becker

Photo: Nataliya Aluferova

On 16 June 2023, the “Knowing Vaccines” Innovative Training Network (ITN) held its third workshop, organised by the ITN’s PhD students and postdoc researcher. Medical historian and anthropologist Prof. Dr. Eberhard Wolff, who lectures at the Universities of Basel and Zürich, was invited as guest speaker.

In his talk, Wolff emphasized that vaccination non-acceptance needs to be analysed from within its own belief system, rather than applying a normative logic which seeks to accuse and delegitimize any forms of resistance. By close-reading a source from the beginning of the 19th century, he pointed to different layers of reality perception and the importance of which interpretive frameworks to apply. Wolff insisted that understanding vaccination resistance from an emic perspective does not mean to legitimize it. Instead, it is of vital importance to reflect the standpoint of one’s own analytical approach and the extent to which this approach is loaded with normativity. Wolff suggested that vaccination can be understood as a crossroad and focal point where different ethics and social value systems collide and merge.

In the second part of the workshop, ITN members presented analytical insights from their respective research projects. Peter Banks and Tobias Becker showed how vaccine promotion is historically embedded, and pointed to the status of risk communication. Lesley Branagan analysed how vaccine injury patient groups in the UK seek out expertise and advocate for new medical categories. Nataliya Aluferova and Carolin Albers used excerpts from their ethnographic interviews to illustrate negotiations of power and agency in patient-doctor relationships.

The final plenary discussion addressed the role of risk and – as a flipside – hope as reoccurring elements of vaccination discourses and controversies. It became clear that both fear and aspiration can be regarded as different ways of dealing with certainty or uncertainty, including the respective emotions associated with it: What can be preserved or achieved by vaccination? A closer analytical look at this underlying question reveals how social values that are at stake, such as civil liberty, solidarity or the perceived role of the state, differ nationally, historically and culturally.