Advantages of Immunocapital

Historian Kathryn Olivarius invented the term “immunocapital” to describe the advantages that white residents of New Orleans could get from having immunity to yellow fever. According to Olivarius, New
Orleanians could use “immunocapital” to acquire other types of capital – social, cultural, and economic.
“Most unacclimated migrants bought into immunocapital and the hierarchy it created, believing that the
system would benefit them eventually,” writes Olivarius. Is “immunocapital” a transferable concept?
Consider attitudes towards smallpox vaccination in nineteenth-century London. Vaccination was supposed
to give life-long immunity to smallpox, yet laws for mandatory vaccination did not win favor among workingclass residents of London. Many Londoners opposed the practice of vaccination against smallpox and
protested against the Compulsory Vaccination Act of 1853, which made vaccination mandatory for all
infants born in England or Wales. Evidently, they did not equate vaccination to “immunocapital.” While
Olivarius’s idea of “immunocapital” is not directly transferable, we can borrow from her work to understand
resistance to vaccination. How can we do this? We can analyze the motives of anti-vaccinators using the
concept of capital – social, cultural, and economic.
Your task: Use the concept of capital to explain resistance to vaccination in the nineteenth-century. Drawing
from Nadja Durbach’s study of anti-vaccinators, explain why many working-class Londoners worried that
compulsory vaccination would diminish their or their child’s capital – social, cultural, and/or economic.
Your essay should have 3 sections:
In section 1, you should explain the procedure of smallpox vaccination and the Compulsory Vaccination
Acts based on Nadja Durbach’s article.
In section 2, you should explain the basis for resistance to vaccination in London during the second half of
the nineteenth century (the topic of Durbach’s article). Illustrate the arguments of anti-vaccinators with
evidence from Durbach’s article and the primary source discussed in class, John Gibb’s Compulsory
Vaccination Briefly Considered (London 1856).
In section 3, you need to match the criticisms of anti-vaccinators to types of capital. Consider all types of
capital – economic, social and cultural. Not all the arguments that anti-vaccinators used fall into these
categories, but you should be able to identify at least one criticism that fits each category. For example, you
could link criticism of the fine for non-compliance with loss of economic capital.
Finally, in the conclusion, you should assess whether the concept of capital explains the roots of resistance
to compulsory vaccination or whether it fails to capture the most important reasons for resistance. To
address this issue, you will have to decide which motives were the strongest among anti-vaccinators and
whether you can capture those motives with the concept of capital. If you wish, you may also compare
resistance to vaccination in the nineteenth-century and resistance today to childhood immunization.
Relevant readings:
Nadja Durbach, “’They Might as Well Brand Us’: Working-Class Resistance to Compulsory Vaccination in
Victorian England,” Social History of Medicine 13 no. 1 (2000): 45-62
Kathryn Olivarius, “Immunity, Capital, and Power in Antebellum New Orleans,” American Historical Review
(April 2019): 425-455
Supplemental material:
Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in John Richardson, ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for
the Sociology of Education (New York, 1986), 241-258
John Gibbs, Compulsory Vaccination Briefly Considered (London 1856)