Overview

In 2014 Barbados introduced a vaccine to prevent certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce the risk of cervical cancer in young women. Despite the disproportionate burden of cervical cancer in the Caribbean, many Afro-Barbadians chose not to immunize their daughters. In Suspicion, Nicole Charles reframes Afro-Barbadian vaccine refusal from a question of hesitancy to one of suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, black feminist theory, transnational feminist studies and science and technology studies, Charles foregrounds Afro-Barbadians' gut feelings and emotions and the lingering trauma of colonial and biopolitical violence. She shows that suspicion, far from being irrational, is a fraught and generative affective orientation grounded in concrete histories of mistrust of government and coercive medical practices foisted on colonized peoples. By contextualizing suspicion within these longer cultural and political histories, Charles troubles traditional narratives of vaccine hesitancy while offering new entry points into discussions on racialized biopolitics, neocolonialism, care, affect, and biomedicine across the Black diaspora. Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

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9781478015017

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Reviews

Suspicion is a compellingly written and superlatively theorized ethnography of public health, affect, and the persistence of racism in the Caribbean. Nicole Charles uses suspicion to understand the logic behind Black parents' decisions about whether to give their children vaccines, showing that their decisions are rooted not in ignorance and irrationality but within long histories of racial and sexual injury as well as hierarchies related to race, class, color, education, and authority. This is quite simply a remarkable book. -- Deborah A. Thomas, author of * Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair * In this empirically rich account of HPV vaccine promotion and refusal in Barbados, Nicole Charles depathologizes and unsettles conventional understandings of vaccine hesitancy through the urgent conceptual framework of suspicion. Deeply informed by and contributing to plural interdisciplinary conversations in Black feminisms, transnational gender studies, science and technology studies, and the history and anthropology of the Caribbean, Charles listens closely to insightful interlocutors in Barbados to illuminate the embodied affective intensity of contemporary vaccine politics. -- Anne Pollock, author of * Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery * Charles provides us with a thoroughly researched examination of an important subject at a time when such research is urgently needed in the face of a deadly pandemic. She shows us that parents in Barbados are motivated by genuine fears regarding the health of their children, and reasonable suspicion about the motivations of the state, and of vaccine manufacturers. That is significant for understanding how black Caribbean people evaluate technologies that affect health. -- F.S.J. Ledgister * Caribbean Quarterly * This interesting, theoretically engaging book explores vaccine hesitancy among adolescents and young women in the English-speaking Caribbean nation of Barbados. Feminist scholars, medical anthropologists, and health-care professionals in the Caribbean and other postcolonial settings will benefit greatly from exposure to the ideas outlined in this book. Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. General readers. -- F. H. Smith * Choice *

Suspicion is a compellingly written and superlatively theorized ethnography of public health, affect, and the persistence of racism in the Caribbean. Nicole Charles uses suspicion to understand the logic behind Black parents' decisions about whether to give their children vaccines, showing that their decisions are rooted not in ignorance and irrationality but within long histories of racial and sexual injury as well as hierarchies related to race, class, color, education, and authority. This is quite simply a remarkable book. -- Deborah A. Thomas, author of * Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair * In this empirically rich account of HPV vaccine promotion and refusal in Barbados, Nicole Charles depathologizes and unsettles conventional understandings of vaccine hesitancy through the urgent conceptual framework of suspicion. Deeply informed by and contributing to plural interdisciplinary conversations in Black feminisms, transnational gender studies, science and technology studies, and the history and anthropology of the Caribbean, Charles listens closely to insightful interlocutors in Barbados to illuminate the embodied affective intensity of contemporary vaccine politics. -- Anne Pollock, author of * Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery * Charles provides us with a thoroughly researched examination of an important subject at a time when such research is urgently needed in the face of a deadly pandemic. She shows us that parents in Barbados are motivated by genuine fears regarding the health of their children, and reasonable suspicion about the motivations of the state, and of vaccine manufacturers. That is significant for understanding how black Caribbean people evaluate technologies that affect health. -- F.S.J. Ledgister * Caribbean Quarterly *

Suspicion is a compellingly written and superlatively theorized ethnography of public health, affect, and the persistence of racism in the Caribbean. Nicole Charles uses suspicion to understand the logic behind Black parents' decisions about whether to give their children vaccines, showing that their decisions are rooted not in ignorance and irrationality but within long histories of racial and sexual injury as well as hierarchies related to race, class, color, education, and authority. This is quite simply a remarkable book. -- Deborah A. Thomas, author of * Political Life in the Wake of the Plantation: Sovereignty, Witnessing, Repair * In this empirically rich account of HPV vaccine promotion and refusal in Barbados, Nicole Charles depathologizes and unsettles conventional understandings of vaccine hesitancy through the urgent conceptual framework of suspicion. Deeply informed by and contributing to plural interdisciplinary conversations in Black feminisms, transnational gender studies, science and technology studies, and the history and anthropology of the Caribbean, Charles listens closely to insightful interlocutors in Barbados to illuminate the embodied affective intensity of contemporary vaccine politics. -- Anne Pollock, author of * Synthesizing Hope: Matter, Knowledge, and Place in South African Drug Discovery *

Author Information

Nicole Charles is Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies in Culture and Media, University of Toronto, Mississauga.

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