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The Bioeconomics of Domesticating Zoonoses

By Sarah Green

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Cite As:
Green, Sarah. 2022. “The Bioeconomics of Domesticating Zoonoses.” Cultural Anthropology 37, no. 1: 30–36. https://doi.org/10.14506/ca37.1.05.

Abstract

The majority of diseases that afflict humans are shared by nonhuman animals, and three-quarters of emerging diseases do so. People have known this for centuries, understanding that diseases traveled the same routes as did traders, migrants, and soldiers. Zoonosis is a process that involves the movement of a pathogen from a nonhuman animal body to a human animal body, which then triggers disease. In the past, this reality mostly served as an impediment to the bioeconomics of working with animals; in more recent years, research on zoonoses has turned animals into part of bioeconomic logic in themselves. 

Keywords

borders; crosslocations; animals; nonhuman; domestication; zoonoses