Joyce Sauann Lu

This project brings together ethnography and epidemiology to examine the changing biosocial life of antibiotics in the context of emerging global health concerns over antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Guatemala. Taking place in K’iche and Mam Maya communities in the western highlands of Guatemala, it asks, how are antibiotics valued, used, and circulated in practices of care? What are local understandings of the therapeutic (in)efficacy of antibiotics? How are economies and experiences of antibiotics shaped by the sociopolitical ecologies that they move through? This project draws together diverse perspectives from residents, indigenous pharmaceutical vendors, human and animal healthcare providers, and AMR scientists to follow the historical, sociopolitical, and ecological traces of antibiotic economies.