Sociology of Vaccines. Part I

Sociological research on vaccines is today more timely than ever not least due to the many apparent difficulties in the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent pandemic clearly showed that a multi-perspective sociological analysis of vaccines is highly needed. While anti-vaccine movements, hesitancy and vaccine misinformation has been in focus recently, a sociology of vaccines is a broader field, from an analysis of vaccine development and innovation, testing, access, logistics, distribution, global health infrastructures and, importantly, public perceptions of safety and efficacy, and lay conceptions of what RCT science, immunity and bio-medicine may mean. Vaccines are tied to societal, political and affective registers regarding trust, power, embodiment and science. Sociology of vaccines is highly relevant to the theme of the conference, authoritarianism, in many ways, most obviously via the research fields on the authority of science, science-policy nexus, and policy implementation and lay protest. Vaccines also bring to the fore the many dangers of the nation-state focused paradigm of health research and a lack of a global/planetary perspectives in sociology of health and illness. The nation state logic in health care and epidemiology lead to state led vaccine hoarding as well as the more traditional exploitative North-South research relationships. This panel welcomes contributions from a variety sociological perspectives, hopefully covering the field widely, from the socio-technical imaginaries in development, production and up-take, to lay cultures of acceptance and refusal, and many more. A range of theoretical and methodological approaches, and geographical locations is most appreciated.