Centre for Research on Pandemics & Society (PANSOC)

Esyllt Jones, University of Manitoba, will present: “Contested Concepts of Borders and Containment in the Great Influenza Pandemic Era in Canada” on 17 November at 1600 CET. Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

In Canada, as in other constitutionally federal systems, the response to pandemic influenza was highly decentralized and variable. Local-level tensions emerged over spatial boundaries and containment, and public trust in non-pharmaceutical interventions could not be assumed. In the post-pandemic era, public health searched for a new paradigm. The pandemic strengthened a shift from compulsion to cooperation. However, diverse public perceptions of what a functioning public health system should accomplish and how revealed those struggles over legitimacy and authority that characterize major disease outbreaks historically, including COVID-19. What were the ‘lessons’ of the pandemic? Whether and in what ways the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic shaped public health and disease containment over the longer term is still in many ways an unanswered question.

Bio:

Esyllt W. Jones (PhD, FRSC) is the Humanities Research Professor in the Faculty of Arts, and Professor in the Departments of History and Community Health Sciences, at the University of Manitoba. She is a historian of infectious disease and society, and the history of movements for socialized medicine. Her books include Influenza 1918: Disease, Death and Struggle in Winnipeg (2007), Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, Society and Culture in Canada (2012) edited with Madga Fahrni, and Radical Medicine: the International Origins of Socialized Health Care in Canada (2019). The volume Medicare’s Histories: Origins, Opportunities, and Omissions in Canada, edited with James Hanley and Delia Gavrus, was released in June 2022.

Watch Ben Schneider’s webinar on “Work and the 1918–20 Influenza Pandemic in the US” here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rlm0NWN5yvDEvRvQFgkuaX513oxTBn40/view?usp=sharing

And catch up on other past PANSOC webinars here:

Heather Battles, The University of Auckland, will present the next PANSOC webinar: “A historical syndemic? Measles and scarlet fever in goldfields-era Victoria” on November 3 at 1600 Oslo time (remember our clocks “fall back” on October 30!). Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

How do we identify a historical syndemic? In Roberts & Battles (2021), we identified a series of synchronous epidemics of measles and scarlet fever in Victoria, Australia between 1853 to 1876, suggesting a synergistic relationship. We explored this synergy, its emergence, and ending in the context of the 1850s-70s gold-mining boom and post-boom changes in fertility, mortality, and housing infrastructure, pointing to the importance of social conditions in disease evolution. This talk will build on this and discuss work-in-progress on the use of a quantitative method to test for presence of a syndemic effect. 

Heather Battles (PhD 2013, McMaster University) is a Lecturer in Biological Anthropology at The University of Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research interests centre on applying a biocultural approach to understanding the evolution and ecology of infectious diseases in human populations and their impacts (biological and social). She specializes in historical epidemics and emerging and re-emerging infections.

Ben Schneider, Oslo Metropolitan University, will present: “Work and the 1918–20 Influenza Pandemic in the US” on October 27 at 1600 CET. Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

Work is increasingly recognized as an important part of human wellbeing (Ahmed 2003, Green 2006) and present-day researchers have evaluated changes in work-related wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic (CIPD 2021). This paper uses the first historical measure of job quality (Schneider 2022) to structure analysis of how labor and working conditions changed during the 1918–20 influenza pandemic in the United States. Contemporary reports suggest that in addition to the direct disease impacts of the pandemic, the Spanish flu also disrupted earnings and may have increased workplace accidents. This research contributes to scholarship on pandemic impacts and provides a comparison point for present-day work and wellbeing studies during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ben Schneider is a historical social scientist of work and wellbeing and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Research on Pandemics and Society, Oslo Metropolitan University. His research examines how the quality of jobs has changed in the past, focusing on the effects of disease outbreaks and technological change. His previous work analyzed technological unemployment and the incentives for innovation in the British Industrial Revolution. He has a PhD in Economic and Social History from the University of Oxford.

Catch up on recent PANSOC webinars here!

Sushma Dahal, Georgia State University, “Investigating COVID-19 transmission and mortality differences between indigenous and non-indigenous populations in Mexico.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pCAQJTT6VNlJSpUK0sF2DPgCIHSF8V2z/view?usp=sharing

Alexi Gugushvili, University of Oslo, “The COVID-19 Pandemic and War: The Case of Ukraine.”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/130_BjrV1NUIvIZqkL1HNrO6LgfM3mXJF/view?usp=sharing

Masato Shizume, Waseda University, “The Great Influenza Pandemic in Japan: Policy Responses and Socioeconomic Consequences.” 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NqroXG-sQFi_fBlOLeHIjSO0yna4UHHo/view?usp=sharing

And other past webinars can be found here:

On 20 October, Masato Shizume, Waseda University, will present “The Great Influenza Pandemic in Japan: Policy Responses and Socioeconomic Consequences.” Please note we will meet at 1500 CET, one hour earlier than usual. Contact jessicad@oslomet.no for a link.

This paper explores the socioeconomic consequences of the 1918-1920 Great Influenza Pandemic (GIP) in Japan. First, it reviews the chronological and geographical patterns of the disease’s spread and policy responses by the government. It then employs panel analyses to test the quantitative effects of the pandemic on socioeconomic indicators such as population growth, factory employment, wage, capital formation, and income. The study finds that 1) Japan was hit by the pandemic twice, once in the winter of 1918-1919 and again in the winter to spring of 1919-1920, with the urban population facing a greater risk to life because of greater exposure to the virus, while the rural population was more likely to succumb to the disease when infected, 2) the pandemic seemed to have a noticeable effect on socioeconomic activities in the short and medium terms, suggesting a trigger of population outflows and substitution of labor by capital without any adverse effect on income, and 3) the government response included medical and public health measures but not economic measures. Though the GIP was similar to COVID-19 in terms of epidemiological patterns, it was very different in terms of human agency and socioeconomic consequences.

See also: https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/dp2022-27.html

Masato Shizume is a professor of economic history at Waseda University. His research focuses mainly on the history of money and credit and the emergence and developments of the modern society and state in Japan. His recent publications include The Japanese Economy During the Great Depression: The Emergence of Macroeconomic Policy in A Small and Open Economy, 1931–1936, Springer, 2021; “Historical Evolution of Monetary Policy (Goals and Instruments) in Japan: From the Central Bank of an Emerging Economy to the Central Bank of a Mature Economy,” Stefano Battilossi, Youssef Cassis, and Kazuhiko Yago, editors, Handbook of the History of Money and Currency, 2018.