Though I appreciate any historical input on miasma and/or miasma theory, I'm specifically interested in ways in which it's been used outside of, or as an extension beyond, the more commonly known medical theory applications.
For example, has it been heavily tied to things like eugenics, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc., or does it tend to surface as a vague catch-all for social problems?
Thanks!
Not sure if I'm misinterpreting your question here, but in the Classical Greek world miasma was an almost exclusively religious term, referring to the pollution of death and renewal. Due to the pervasiveness of ancient religion, miasma was irremovable from people's socio-political identity of a person or family. For example, the Alcmaeonid family, from which the famous Pericles comes, could never really shake the taint of their act of pollution, killing in a consecrated sanctuary. The Spartans used it as a pretext for war and a tyrant used it to annul a marriage. Both these examples show the religious and political duality of the ancient world, for the modern observer these actions are at once rationally political and irrationally superstitious. You could easily argue that miasma was heavily tied to all the phenomena (race relations, sex relations) you list in this context.
Also, while it does get used as a medical term as Hippocratic authors develop medical writing, it's almost certainly borrowed from it's original religious meaning.
If you're interested in more, look up Robert Parker's (1983) Miasma: Pollution and Purification in early Greek Religion