title: Tuberculosis is a threshold: the making of a social disease in post-Soviet Georgia.
abstract: In this article I use Margaret Lock's concept of local biology as a standpoint to view tuberculosis as a threshold where distinctions between social and biological aspects of disease are negotiated. I conceptualize tuberculosis as a threshold in two ways: first as a passageway, and second as a space for navigating the limits of tolerance to therapeutics. The article is based on ethnographic research about responses to tuberculosis in post-Soviet Georgia. I focus on how health professionals and patients make claims to social aspects of illness by recuperating historical examples for tuberculosis treatment as a moral commitment to society, and in the context of emergent patient-centered treatment services.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506, USA. erin.koch@uky.edu
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Koch
mesh_terms: D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D005846:Georgia (Republic) / Q000453:epidemiology; D014943:Global Health; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D011634:Public Health; D014376:Tuberculosis / Q000453:epidemiology*