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Stress and stereotypes: children's reactions to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK in 2001
Author(s) -
Nerlich Brigitte,
Hillyard Sam,
Wright Nick
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
children and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.538
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 1099-0860
pISSN - 0951-0605
DOI - 10.1002/chi.845
Subject(s) - outbreak , foot and mouth disease , disease , foot (prosody) , rural area , socioeconomics , psychology , demography , medicine , sociology , linguistics , philosophy , pathology , virology
In 2001 foot and mouth disease broke out in the UK and millions of farm animals were slaughtered in order to eradicate it. This affected farmers, town dwellers, adults and children. Based on a small sample of 56 e‐mails to a children's BBC (CBBC) message board and using an ethnomethodological approach, this article explores the way in which children in rural and urban areas responded to the effects of this epidemic and how they structured their understandings of one another through the use of rural and urban stereotypes. It shows that the stress felt by some of the children who lived on or near infected farms during the outbreak was exacerbated by the fact that they felt misunderstood by other children living in surroundings not directly affected by foot and mouth disease.