Infectious disease pandemics are a rising threat in our globalizing world. This agenda-setting collection provides international analysis of the pressing sociological concerns they confront us with, from cross-border coordination of public health governance to geopolitical issues of development and social equity.

• Focuses on vital sociological issues raised by resurgent disease pandemics
• Detailed analysis of case studies as well as broader, systemic factors
• Contributions from North America, Europe and Asia provide international perspective
• Bold, agenda-setting treatment of a high-profile topic

Robert Dingwall is a consulting sociologist and part-time Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, UK. He is a widely published author and editor in the fields of medical sociology, law and society, and science and technology. A former UK government adviser on ethical aspects of national pandemic planning, and consultant to Roche Pharmaceuticals, he co-edited the Handbook of Qualitative Health Research (2010) and was editor of the four-volume Qualitative Health Research (2008).

Lily M. Hoffman is Associate Professor of Sociology at City College and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York, USA, where she directs the MA program in Sociology. A specialist on urban governance issues, she is a former chairperson of the Urban and Community section of the American Sociological Association. Prof Hoffman co-edited Cities and Visitors: Regulating People, Markets and City Space (2003), and is the author of The Politics of Knowledge: Activist Movements in Medicine and Planning (1989).

Karen Staniland is a Senior Lecturer in Nursing at the University of Salford, UK, and holds a PhD in sociology. Her research focuses on sociological and ethnographic studies of healthcare work, applied to improving the quality of care. In addition to co-editing The Nurse Mentor and Reviewer Update Book (2010) and Clinical Skills: The Essence of Caring (2009), she has written open-learning materials on pandemic influenza for healthcare professionals.

Introduction: why a Sociology of Pandemics?: Robert Dingwall, Lily M. Hoffman and Karen Staniland

1. Public health intelligence and the detection of potential pandemics: Martin French and Eric Mykhalovskiy

2. West Nile virus: the production of a public health pandemic: Maya K. Gislason

3. Who’s worried about turkeys? How ‘organisational silos’ impede zoonotic disease surveillance: Colin Jerolmack

4. How did international agencies perceive the avian influenza problem? The adoption and manufacture of the ‘One World, One Health’ framework: Yu-Ju Chien

5. Global health risks and cosmopolitisation: from emergence to interference: Muriel Figuié

6. The politics of securing borders and the identities of disease: Rosemary C.R. Taylor

7. The return of the city-state: urban governance and the New York City H1N1 pandemic: Lily M. Hoffman

8. The making of public health emergencies: West Nile virus in New York City: Sabrina McCormick and Kristoffer Whitney

9. Using model-based evidence in the governance of pandemics: Erika Mansnerus

10. Exploring the ambiguous consensus on public–private partnerships in collective risk preparation: Véronique Steyer and Claude Gilbert

11. ‘If you have a soul, you will volunteer at once’: gendered expectations of duty to care during pandemics: Rebecca Godderis and Kate Rossiter

12. Flu frames: Karen Staniland and Greg Smith

13. Attention to the media and worry over becoming infected: the case of the Swine Flu (H1N1) Epidemic of 2009: Gustavo S. Mesch, Kent P. Schwirian and Tanya Kolobov

14. Why the French did not choose to panic: a dynamic analysis of the public response to the influenza pandemic: William Sherlaw and Jocelyn Raude

Index