Social Contagion and Cultural Epidemics: Phenomenological and “Experience-Near” Explorations

We open the special issue by asking: how are groups of people affected by similar conditions, even when these are not biologically contagious? This is linked to broader theoretical and empirical questions of how we are influenced by others and by the specific times and places in which we live. We describe the history and etymology of the concepts of epidemics and contagion and argue that we need to reclaim some of the pre-Hippocratic meanings of these concepts. Importantly, we suggest a postponement, or epoche, of the negative moral judgment of these terms with a view to exploring what actually happens when noncommunicable diseases and conditions spread. We introduce a variety of existing approaches and argue that they have taken us only part of the way in trying to understand social contagion and cultural epidemics. The articles in this issue explore a variety of noncommunicable conditions that have gained global prominence as epidemic problems—diabetes, obesity, trauma, and autism—through perspectives and concepts from phenomenological and experience-near traditions. This includes emic ideas of social contagion and contamination, intersubjective units of analysis, causal indeterminacy, as well as diversity and transformation in social contagion.