The social production of the zika virus and disease and the vector. A sociopolitical and technoscientific history

Abstract Since at least the last four decades, emerging infectious diseases have confronted the theoretical, methodological bases of the Public Health. This article discusses these diseases based on the genesis of the zika virus and disease and the vector. The framework developed for this research is supported by epistemology and history of science combined with the theory of reflexive modernization formulated by Ulrich Beck. The empirical material analysed were scientific articles that produced the “discovery” of zika virus and disease and the vector, as well as scientific material of the sociocultural context in which these articles were produced. These materials were analyzed using the latourian methodological approach of scientific facts construction. The results show that zika virus and disease and the vector are not only natural facts, but they are social and human production, procedeed in Entebbe, Uganda, Africa, in the second quarter of the 20th century, approximately. It was through social processes that the zika virus emerged and became a pathogenic agent. It shows also that, under the assumptions of the reflexivity of modernity, the health field needs to rethink epistemological perspectives regarding infectious diseases, considering them radically as a product of the relations between society and nature, and, thus, permeated by constitutive uncertainties.