The Age of Immunology: Conceiving a Future in an Alienating World

344 Pages·2003·5.227 MB·English

by  A. David Napier

The Age of Immunology

The Age of Immunology
CONCEIVING A FUTURE IN AN ALIENATING WORLD
A. David Napier
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS / CHICAGO AND LONDON
A. David Napier is professor of anthropology and Dana Faculty Fellow at Middlebury
College and director of Students of Human Ecology, a nonprofit organization that combines
academic mentoring and community service. He is the author of Foreign Bodies: Performance,
Art, and Symbolic Anthropology,and Masks, Transformation, and Paradox.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2003by A. David Napier
All rights reserved. Published 2003
Printed in the United States of America
12111009080706050403 12345
ISBN: 0-226-56812-1(cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Napier, A. David.
The age of immunology : conceiving a future in an alienating world /
A. David Napier.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn0-226-56812-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Ethnology—Philosophy. 2. Intercultural communication. 3. Self. 4. Change.
5. Immunology. I. Title.
gn345.n36 2003
305.8(cid:2)001—dc21
2002012926
(cid:2)(cid:2)The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ansi z39.48-1992.
For Andrew, Harriet, and the future M.D.

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Contents
Acknowledgments.xi
Preface Nailed to the Crossroads.xv
1
Introduction.
Part I Anthropology
19
1 Anthropological Inoculations.
40
2 Thinking Immunologically.
74
3 Immunology and Illness Experience.
Part II Epistemology
109
4 Foreign AIDS: Cultural Relations as an Immunological Form.
142
5 Unnatural Selection: Social Symbols of the Microbial World.
181
6 Reciprocity: Solution and Dissolution in Immunology.
202
7 Undiscovered Selves.
Part III Autogeny
237
Epilogue Nonself Help.
289
Notes.
299
References.
315
Index.