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idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
Malaria has shaped southern Italy for centuries. Two new research projects by Dr. Lene Faust and private lecturer Dr. Christian Franke are investigating how the disease continues to influence social structures today and what this could mean for other pandemics. The second is about the development of malaria drugs in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 30s.
Corona has shown many people for the first time how profoundly an illness can change social life: Social distancing, avoidance strategies, new everyday routines and an altered sense of security have shaped everyday life. What remains when such a threat is over? Economic historian PD Dr. Christian Franke and social anthropologist Dr. Lene Faust from the University of Siegen are asking this question with regard to malaria, a disease from which people have suffered greatly for centuries. Their research in the project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation focuses specifically on the effects of malaria in southern Italy. The disease was part of everyday life there for a long time and was deeply rooted in cultural, social and economic practices. Malaria was omnipresent until well into the 20th century. Entire regions were considered barely habitable. In the 1880s alone, official statistics recorded around 20,000 deaths per year. "Malaria had a lasting impact on politics, literature and urban and landscape planning," say Lene Faust and Christian Franke, explaining the approach of their research.
The project explores the question of what has remained of this experience. "We want to investigate the role played by traumatic experiences such as the death of relatives or permanent damage to health and how these experiences continue to have an impact today," says Faust. In doing so, he and Lene Faust want to shift the focus away from short-term crisis reactions to long-term developments. While it is well researched how societies react to acute endemics and pandemics, surprisingly little is known about the deep cultural, social and socio-economic impact of epidemics. Researchers assume that malaria is deeply inscribed in (cultural) memory. For example, the reluctance of many people to venture outside the cities into certain landscapes, which is still noticeable today, could be a distant echo of the disease. "In southern Italy, we see patterns of action triggered by malaria that have probably also influenced organized crime structures," says Franke. "For example, landowners fled from malaria to the cities and left the work to administrators. This also contributed to the development of parallel structures outside the legal system over long periods of time."
In terms of methodology, the project is breaking new ground: it combines historical source analysis with social anthropological field research and findings from psychological trauma research. This multi-perspective approach is also intended to reveal unconscious dimensions of social practices.
This project is complemented by a second malaria research project funded by the Finkelstein Foundation of Bayer AG, which was established in 2023. Here, Faust and Franke are shedding light on a previously little-researched period in the history of malaria: the collaboration between IG Farben/Bayer and fascist Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. The focus is on synthetic malaria drugs, their testing and questions of political instrumentalization, economic interests and the moral responsibility of science and industry. The project questions established cultures of remembrance as well as national roles of perpetrators and victims and shows how closely medical-ethical questions of research, politics and business can be intertwined.
The projects, with a total funding volume of around 430,000 euros, are based at the School of Economic Disciplines, Business Information Systems and Business Law at the University of Siegen.
PD Dr. Christian Franke
christian2.franke@uni-siegen.de
Tel.: 0271/740-4469
Dr. Lene Faust
lene.faust@uni-siegen.de
Tel.: 0271/740-2493
The League of Nations Malaria Commission on a study trip to the main malaria areas of Sicily in 1926 ...
Copyright: Archives of the League of Nations/Collage: Stephanie Axt
Dr. Lene Faust and PD Dr. Christian Franke are conducting research on the social consequences of epi ...
Copyright: University of Siegen
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