A World of Resistance
India and the Global Antibiotic Crisis
Alex Broom author Assa Doron author
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Publishing:27th Mar '26
£27.95
This title is due to be published on 27th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A sweeping analysis uncovers the causes of—and solutions to—one of the most daunting public health challenges facing the world today: antibiotic resistance exploding in India.
The discovery of antibiotics was one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the twentieth century, dramatically increasing human lifespans. Yet today, with antibiotic-resistant superbugs implicated in as many deaths as HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, the limits of these miracle drugs have become alarmingly clear.
At ground zero of the growing crisis is India, one of the world’s largest consumers of antibiotics and a powerhouse in pharmaceutical manufacturing. In A World of Resistance, Assa Doron and Alex Broom draw on years of fieldwork in hospitals, in pharmacies, and on factory farms to examine the enormous social and environmental costs of overreliance on antibiotics. They show how an overtaxed healthcare system with limited oversight, widespread use of antibiotics in industrial agriculture, and the incessant dumping of pharmaceutical waste into waterways have created the ideal conditions for antibiotic-resistant microbes to grow.
As resistance spreads across India and beyond, Doron and Broom argue that the solution isn’t to restrict access to antibiotics but to embrace forms of health education, indigenous practices, and policies grounded in social solidarity. Only then, the authors contend, is it possible to turn the page on India’s precarious relationship with antibiotics and to address resistance globally before it is too late.
The development of antibiotics in the mid-twentieth century seemed like a medical ‘magic bullet’ that would kill off harmful bacteria without hurting humans. A World of Resistance shows us how and why that magic bullet is now aimed dangerously back at us. This book is not only a dire warning about the consequences of ignoring the domino effects of decades of growing global socioeconomic inequalities, but also a call to collective action. -- Theresa MacPhail, author of Allergic
Doron and Broom weave a compelling tale of medical scholarship, indigenous knowledge, and cultural storytelling, laying bare the myriad ways in which ordinary men and women have managed health miracles. Undeniably urgent, the narrative warns that the antibiotic epoch is crumbling: efficacy is falling, and the consequences will touch everyone. -- Shashi Tharoor, member of Indian Parliament
As antibiotics infiltrate and erode our food and health in unsuspected ways, understanding the social origins of superbugs is a vital and urgent public project. A World of Resistance makes a hugely valuable and timely contribution to this endeavor. Doron and Broom’s meticulous analysis and engaging narrative make a complex subject easy to grasp. As a scholar of the environment and well-being, and as a person who lives in India and relies on its healthcare systems, I want everyone to read this book. -- Amita Baviskar, author of Uncivil City
The incisive and comparative insights that Doron and Broom offer through their meticulous ethnography of the use and misuse of antibiotics in India make this book a groundbreaking intervention in political and cultural studies of our changing relations with the microbial world we inhabit. A must-read for anyone interested in the planetary environmental predicament that humanity finds itself facing today. -- Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of One Planet, Many Worlds
Doron and Broom present a compelling vista of the ongoing race between antibiotic regimes to improve human health in India and the growth of microbes resistant to these antibiotics. Based on intensive ethnography, a wide range of interviews, and a remarkable array of secondary sources, the authors offer a cautiously optimistic reading of the futures of microbial modernity in large and unequal societies like India. -- Arjun Appadurai, author of Banking on Words
ISBN: 9780674295612
Dimensions: 235mm x 156mm x 19mm
Weight: 580g
264 pages