On the trail of Ebola : Investigating the origins of the virus in northeastern DRC

This dissertation can be read as an investigation of investigations. It focuses on the various investigations into the origin of the Ebola virus undertaken by investigating communities: scientists, local clinicians, health, administrative or religious authorities, affected patients. In the course of a nine-month ethnographic study, I have also examined the question of the virus origins, attempting to frame it as relevant for the social sciences. The dissertation is structured in three parts. The first explores the critical potential of popular accounts of the emergence of Ebola, and dialogues with the political anthropology of global health. The second part investigates the production of science and ignorance about Ebola from an STS perspective. The third part looks at the environmental history of territories of emergence and proposes to write new epidemic narratives to present the rich historical, ecological and political materials too often obfuscated by epidemiological or virological reasoning. This thesis examines the different ways in which certain signs are considered as scientific evidence, while others remain in the shadows and are not considered relevant to inform on the ecology of the Ebola virus. It shows the practical consequences of the epistemic privilege enjoyed by certain methods, notably molecular description, over others based on field surveys and aware of the multiple relationships between living beings.