Conversation with Kira Ganga Kieffer, PhD Candidate, Religion
Interview with Kira Ganga Kieffer
Dissertation Project: “Pure Bodies, Sacred Souls: Religion and Vaccine Skepticism in Modern American History”
How did you arrive at such an opportune research project? How did you manage to reverse the usual trajectory by securing a book deal prior to completing the dissertation?
When the pandemic struck, I had already researched and written about a third of my dissertation, which investigated discourses of religion, the authority of medical knowledge, and alternative medicine in the modern United States. I had planned three case studies: vaccine skepticism, essential oils, and herbal supplements. As it turned out, I researched and wrote the first case, which was vaccine skepticism. I focused on the causes and explanations underlying proliferating outbreaks of measles occurring across the US that resulted from some parents refusing to vaccinate their children. In the course of my study, I discovered that vaccine skepticism was bipartisan. Some vaccine skeptics were progressive, liberal, and secular. Others were conservative, libertarian, and evangelical Christian. I was already onto the next case study when Covid-19 hit.
Driving to Cape Cod sometime in May 2020, I came face to face with a large crowd of people protesting mandatory mask wearing. Surprisingly, many of these agitators also held up anti-vaccine signs, even though there was no Covid-19 vaccine on the horizon. Observing similar demonstrations across the country, I concluded that the impulses firing up Covid protesters were of a piece with those animating the measles vaccine skeptics highlighted in my dissertation chapter. Both groups were inclined to question authority. Both placed a high premium on their rights to keep control, to maintain autonomy, even sovereignty over their bodies. Both were predisposed to individualistic rather than communitarian or collectivistic values. Both were concerned about vaccines as “contaminants” and maintaining a “natural order.” I see all of these things as fundamentally religious concepts, no matter what tradition they’re coming from. They seem secular, but when we take a more expansive view, it’s more complicated.
I decided to pitch an article to Religion & Politics comparing the religious aspects of vaccine skepticism to the anti-masking campaigns I was seeing all over the news. By chance, the religion editor at Princeton University Press read the article and asked me to submit a book proposal on the subject of the religious history of vaccine skepticism in the United states. After my proposal went through peer review and was accepted, I set out to revamp my dissertation project. Since I was contracted to write a whole book about vaccine skepticism, it made sense that I upscale the single chapter on the subject into the whole dissertation.
How has the pandemic affected the way in which you approach your subject?
Rather than focus exclusively on Covid-19, I have decided to study vaccine skepticism and religion throughout modern history. From the polio vaccine in the 1950s which had near universal acceptance, to an uptick in skepticism in the 1980s, culminating in the situation today when apparently 30% of Americans are reluctant take the Covid vaccine, the project traces the trajectory of this ostensibly marginal but quite consequential discourse—vaccine skepticism—in the US since the 1950s. Following other scholars who study vaccine skepticism or hesitancy, I use those terms instead of “anti-vaxxing.” Vaccine skepticism is more inclusive and accurate––most people who are concerned about vaccines are not necessarily concerned about them writ large. Often, they have specific concerns about specific vaccines or they are opposed to the mandatory nature of vaccine programs but not vaccines entirely.
The volume of exponentially increasing electronic and digital sources is the bane of the historian of the last few decades. I am doing my best to gather information as efficiently and comprehensively as I can. Currently I am focused on collecting key historical sources which I am harvesting from electronic archives, from magazines, and from newspapers. I am also downloading, screen grabbing, and saving a lot of information from blog posts, and Facebook groups, and social media memes. The Instagram post is an especially useful source since, unlike its counterparts (such as Twitter), its form permits communication in relatively expansive text set beside attention-grabbing images.
Doing research on a topic that is as quickly moving as Covid presents particular challenges. Covid skeptic information has proved quite ephemeral. As misinformation and disinformation have become endemic, social media companies (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Amazon) have opted to take down vaccine skeptical or outright antivaccine hosts that make up a substantial part of my contemporary archives. Although these actions are no doubt justified on public health grounds, in effect, the companies are scrubbing the Internet of my archives! It’s a fascinating phenomenon in itself.
Do you have any advice for scholars working on contemporaneously unfolding developments on the margins of mainstream discourse, especially in the ephemeral world of social media?
Vaccine skepticism’s natural habitat is the Internet. I try to take advantage of the logic of social media, including influencers or opinion makers, followers or disseminators, and the almighty algorithm. For example, by following (on social media) leading vaccine-skeptical influencers such as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and following those who follow him/them down the food chain, I have been able to ride the wave of the algorithm. Having established markers by following leaders of the movement, the algorithm in turn identifies for me more actors and information within the network. With time, I have been able to get a more comprehensive feel for the vaccine skeptic eco-system as well as to identify patterns and trends within this community. In a sense, I am applying the rules of traditional research to a new medium: identifying field-specific authorities, and chasing down the different people who cite them, thereby building a series of interconnections that ultimately highlight the contours, controversies, and conversations within a given field.
Also, I really like using Amazon for research. It’s great for procuring old or used books or DVDs. Nowadays, mainstream publishers rarely publish materials addressed to marginal or fringe communities such as vaccine skeptics. For these, one has to resort to Amazon, which often has a treasure trove of self-published books available, also by virtue of algorithm, for viewing and purchase by likeminded people. Many of these materials are also moving targets. So if something is making a splash on social media or showing up in my vaccine skeptical Amazon searches, I grab it before it’s taken down.
It’s really interesting to compare the dispersion of source material about Covid-19 with vaccine controversies of ten, twenty, and thirty years ago, which is what I’m doing in my work. The dispersion of information facilitated by new media, and now the Internet, really mirrors the dispersion of authoritative sources over the past fifty years.
Kira was interviewed by Arthur George Kamya, April 2021.