"The message of [this work] is both timely and time-honored. The birds and their microbes, like the omens of classical literature, bear witness to a realm of higher truths. We would do well to heed our augurs."

Public Books

“Written at the intersection of medical anthropology, multispecies ethnography, global health, political economy, and biopolitics, Viral Economies is a luminous and groundbreaking book that explores the complex outcomes of efforts to contain the spread of avian influenza in Vietnam. By analyzing bird flu interventions as experimental systems of knowledge, work, value, and care, Porter provides a nuanced account of how the intensifying commoditization of poultry livestock unsettles already precarious relationships between global biosecurity, transnational and translocal trade, state-led modernization policies, and rural livelihoods.”

Ann Marie Leshkowich, College of the Holy Cross

“Viral Economies navigates the rapidly morphing terrain of global health policy, interventions, and surveillance, revealing the entwined livelihoods of humans and nonhumans in this highly animated and unstable landscape. Porter pushes ethnography beyond its usual strictures to illuminate startling, emergent disease ecologies, which are as much the products of marketing as mutations. This book is a riveting accomplishment.”

John Hartigan, University of Texas, Austin

"In this insightful and interesting text, Porter considers public health strategies used in Vietnam, as experienced by individual poultry farmers and in industrial-scale farming operations. She also addresses broad issues related to market economies, geopolitics, disease ecology, medical anthropology, viral surveillance, and global health policies."

Choice