In its scale, its virulence, and, most significantly, its urbanity, the 2014-2015 outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD or simply Ebola) in the Mano River region of West Africa seemed to challenge the basic tools of modern public health. As a result, the government of Liberia took the extraordinary step of implementing a cordon sanitaire around one of the poorest neighborhoods in the capital city, Monrovia. Observers labeled both the quarantine and the ensuing riots as barbaric acts not seen since the plagues of the Middle Ages. This characterization masked the real history of racial separation that defines many African cities, and cast Monrovia's poorest residents as morally bankrupt, primitive savages. In this article I instead explore the quarantine as an instance of the repetition of a familiar urban form, and read the ensuing violence in Monrovia's West Point neighborhood not as an ethical problem but as an “empty” political gesture.
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Resource collections
- COVID-19 Response Collection
- Learning from crises
- Topics
- UN Habitat - Urban Response Collection
- Urban Response - Urban Crisis Preparedness and Risk Reduction
- Urban Response Collection - Community Engagement and Social Cohesion
- Urban Response Collection - Economic Recovery
- Urban Response Collection - Environment and Climate Change
- Urban Response Collection - Housing, Land and Property
- Urban Response Collection - Urban Crisis Response, Recovery and Reconstruction
- Urban Response Collection - Urban Resilience
