Introduction: The Time of Epidemics

The introduction to this special section of the journal argues that while it is widely accepted today that infectious disease epidemics are the result of long-term and complex social, ecological, economic and political processes, outbreaks are, more often than not, experienced on the ground as unexpected eruptions. This introduction defends the position that the dialectics between the evental and processual aspects of epidemics are good to think with anthropologically, and points to the consequences of this for an analysis of epidemic temporality in the context of emergent infectious disease discourse and intensifying biopolitical surveillance aimed at averting the ‘next pandemic’.