The making of Lyme disease: a political ecology of ticks and tick-borne illness in Virginia

ABSTRACT

Scholars often attribute the increases in the incidence of tick-borne diseases to anthropogenic factors such as climate change and shifting land use patterns. However, they tend to overlook the politics and economics underpinning such factors and, in turn, what is necessary to change them. To remedy these problems, I take a political ecological approach to understand why and when anthropogenic changes, such as sub- and ex-urban development, facilitate the emergence and spread of ticks, their hosts, and the diseases they carry. Examining the case of Lyme disease in Northern Virginia, I argue that the emergence and spread of Lyme disease to new locations is not only the result of climate change and sub- and ex-urbanization, but also the result of the adoption of liberal economic policies, specifically financial deregulation and the privatization of government services. To support this argument, I demonstrate how changing forms of housing finance and the rise in federal government subcontracting from the 1970s onward propelled the growth of large-lot suburbs south of Washington D.C. and resulted in the creation of a landscape in which tick-hosts, ticks, and tick-borne disease thrive.

KEYWORDS:

• Emerging infectious disease
• Lyme disease
• neoliberalization
• political ecology

Acknowledgements

Financial support for the research underpinning this manuscript was provided by the Commonwealth Center for Energy and Environment and the College of William & Mary Faculty Research Grant Program. I would like to thank Matthew Abel, Amanda Sikirica, and Grant Shipman for their help gathering various forms of data for this project. In addition, I would like to thank Matthias Leu and Oliver Kerscher for their involvement in the Socionatural Tick-Borne Disease Research Group and Amy A. Quark for the useful comments and recommendations on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In Mayer’s (2000) synthesis of the utility of social scientific approaches to infectious disease more broadly, he briefly discusses how the social history of land use change contributed to the emergence of Lyme disease. Focusing solely on Lyme, my study provides much more depth than Mayer on the actual drivers of land use change and links such changes more specifically to deregulation and finance. In addition, focusing on Lyme disease in Virginia, I examine the disease outside of its usual place of study in the northeastern United States.

2. Different types of blacklegged ticks exist that carry Lyme disease. Ixodes scapularis, simply known as the blacklegged tick, is the most common vector. However, the Ixodes pacificus, known as the western blacklegged tick, is also known to carry the disease. In Eurasia and some parts of North Africa, the Ixodes ricinus, known as the castor bean tick, is also a vector for Lyme disease.

3. In other parts of the world, different variations of the Borrelia spirochete are known to also cause Lyme. In addition, some Lyme cases in the Midwestern U.S. have been linked to Borrelia mayonii.

4. While the white-tailed deer is a largely inefficient reservoir, its body mass and constant meandering on the forest edge make it an exceptional site for the blacklegged tick to both secure its dietary needs and reproduce (Ostfeld 2011, 34).

5. While not discussed herein, it is important to note that redlining and other forms of discrimination in the real estate and home mortgage industries made it more difficult for African Americans and other minorities to purchase a home during this time (Radford 1996).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of William and Mary (US), Commonwealth Center for Energy and Environment.

Notes on contributors

Brent Z. Kaup

Brent Z. Kaup is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the College of William & Mary. His research focuses on the political economy of global environmental change. In his studies, he has examined resource extraction in Bolivia, resistance to coal fired power plants in Virginia, and the links between finance and infectious disease across the globe.