Thu, 29 Feb 2024 • 03:30PM - 05:00PM
A02 Social Sciences Building, Room 441
Free
This seminar is hosted by the Sydney Student and Staff Workshop in Anthropological Research Methods (SSSWARM), Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC) and the School of Social and Political Sciences' Discipline of Anthropology.
Presenter: Ben Hegarty (UNSW)
Virological research is now attending to the possibility that not all viruses cause disease. Some viruses may even be good for us. In this paper, I discuss opportunities for theorising viral symbiosis drawing on my research about the human pegivirus, also known as the ‘Good Boy Virus.’ Good Boy was accidentally discovered in 1995 in the context of hepatitis research. Since then, Good Boy was found to have beneficial impacts for people living with HIV and Ebola, and even touted as a potential 'biovaccine' at a moment of increasing antimicrobial resistance. An ethnography of the human pegivirus offers an ideal opportunity to develop a theoretical account of multispecies symbiosis, in turn opening new vistas on how to live ethically with viruses. However, viruses are notoriously tricky to study as a participant observer: they are microscopic and can be dangerous to human and non-human hosts. This paper will bring together concepts and approaches from virology, queer theory, and more-than-human anthropology, to invite participants into a dialogue about how ethnographic methods can advance new understandings of multispecies relations through an empirical, multisited account of the Good Boy virus.
"I'll be a Good Boy", Kelvin Atmadibrata. WhatsApp messages and photograph taken with iPhone8 camera. Image reproduced with permission from the artist.
Michael Edwards, michael.edwards@sydney.edu.au