1932
0
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Annual Review of Anthropology
  4. Volume 43, 2014
  5. Article

Annual Review of Anthropology

Volume 43, 2014

On the Verge of Death: Visions of Biological Vulnerability*

Abstract

This article considers how anthropologists and other social scientists examine biosecurity as an object in the making. It suggests that scholars encountered this object in research projects concerned with questions of global health, capitalism, neoliberalism, humanitarianism, citizenship, science, medicine, technology, ecology, surveillance, and risk. This growing body of work explores emerging modes of government that are characteristic for the post–Cold War period of global capitalism. Ethnographic accounts demonstrate how actors and institutions located in the Global North and the Global South perceive the spread of dangerous biological things as a threat to the health of individuals and populations. This article aims to review this literature and supplement the current approach with a theory of security performativity.

Keyword(s): danger, disease, risk, security, state, surveillance
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102313-030341
2014-10-21
2024-04-24
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/anthro/43/1/annurev-anthro-102313-030341.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102313-030341&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Albro R, Marcus G, McNamara LA, Schoch-Spana M. 2012. Anthropologists in the Securityscape: Ethics, Practice, and Professional Identity Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press
  2. Anderson B. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism London: Verso
  3. Anderson W. 2006. Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  4. Aradau C, van Munster R. 2011. Politics of Catastrophe. Genealogies of the Unknown London: Routledge
  5. Aretxaga B. 2002. Terror as thrill: first thoughts on the ‘War on Terrorism’. Anthropol. Q. 75:138–50 [Google Scholar]
  6. Armstrong M. 2012. Rehearsing for the plague: citizens, security, and simulation. Can. Rev. Am. Stud. 42:105–20 [Google Scholar]
  7. Arnold D. 1993. Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  8. Austin JL. 2001. How To Do Things with Words Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
  9. Barker K. 2008. Flexible boundaries in biosecurity: accommodating gorse in Aotearoa New Zealand. Environ. Plan. A 40:1598–614 [Google Scholar]
  10. Barker K. 2010. Biosecure citizenship: politicising symbiotic associations and the construction of biological threat. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 35:350–63 [Google Scholar]
  11. Barker K. 2012. Influenza preparedness and the bureaucratic reflex: anticipating and generating the 2009 H1N1 event. Health Place 18:701–9 [Google Scholar]
  12. Bashford A. 2006. Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
  13. Beck U. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity London: Sage
  14. Bingham N, Enticott G, Hinchliffe S. 2008. Biosecurity: spaces, practices, and boundaries. Environ. Plan. A 40:1528–33 [Google Scholar]
  15. Bingham N, Hinchliffe S. 2008. Mapping the multiplicities of biosecurity. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 173–94
  16. Braun B. 2007. Biopolitics and the molecularization of life. Cult. Geogr. 14:6–28 [Google Scholar]
  17. Braun B. 2013. Power over life: biosecurity as biopolitics. See Dobson et al. 2013 45–57
  18. Breckenridge K. 2005. The biometric state: the promise and peril of digital government in the new South Africa. J. South. Afr. Stud. 31:267–82 [Google Scholar]
  19. Briggs CL. 2011. Communicating biosecurity. Med. Anthropol. 30:6–29 [Google Scholar]
  20. Brower J, Chalk P. 2003. The Global Threat of New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: Reconciling U.S. National Security and Public Health Policy. Santa Monica, CA: RAND
  21. Buck-Morss S. 2002. Dreamworld and Catastrophe. The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  22. Bud R. 2007. Penicillin: Triumph and Tragedy Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  23. Buller H. 2008. Safe from the wolf: biosecurity, biodiversity, and competing philosophies of nature. Environ. Plan. A 40:1583–97 [Google Scholar]
  24. Butler J. 2004. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence London: Verso
  25. Caduff C. 2008. Anticipations of biosecurity. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 257–77
  26. Caduff C. 2010. Public prophylaxis: pandemic influenza, pharmaceutical prevention and participatory governance. BioSocieties 5:199–218 [Google Scholar]
  27. Caduff C. 2014. Sick weather ahead: on data-mining, crowd-sourcing, and white noise. Camb. Anthropol. 32:32–46 [Google Scholar]
  28. Chen NN, Sharp LA. 2014. Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability New Mexico: SAR Press
  29. Clark N. 2002. The demon-seed: bioinvasion as the unsettling of environmental cosmopolitanism. Theory Cult. Soc. 19:101–25 [Google Scholar]
  30. Clark N. 2013. Mobile life: biosecurity practices and insect globalization. Sci. Cult. 22:16–37 [Google Scholar]
  31. Cockburn TA. 1963. The Evolution and Eradication of Infectious Diseases Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ.
  32. Cohen L. 2012. Making peasants protestant and other projects: medical anthropology and its global condition. Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Histories, Activisms, and Futures MC Inhorn, EA Wentzell 65–92 Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  33. Colgrove J. 2006. State of Immunity: The Politics of Vaccination in Twentieth-Century America Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  34. Collier SJ. 2008. Enacting catastrophe: preparedness, insurance, budgetary rationalization. Econ. Soc. 37:224–50 [Google Scholar]
  35. Collier SJ, Lakoff A, Rabinow P. 2004. Biosecurity: towards an anthropology of the contemporary. Anthropol. Today 20:3–7 [Google Scholar]
  36. Comaroff J. 2007. Beyond bare life: AIDS, (bio)politics, and the neoliberal order. Public Cult. 19:197–219 [Google Scholar]
  37. Comaroff J, Comaroff JL. 2001. Naturing the nation: aliens, apocalypse, and the postcolonial state. J. South. Afr. Stud. 27:627–51 [Google Scholar]
  38. Cooper M. 2006. Pre-empting emergence: the biological turn in the War on Terror. Theory Cult. Soc. 23:113–35 [Google Scholar]
  39. Croddy E. 2002. Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Comprehensive Survey for the Concerned Citizen. New York: Copernicus
  40. Das V, Kleinman A, Lock MM, Ramphele M, Reynolds P. 2001. Remaking a World: Violence, Social Suffering, and Recovery Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  41. Davies P. 2000. The Devil's Flu New York: Holt
  42. Davis M. 2005. The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu New York/London: New Press
  43. de Abreu MJA. 2013. Technological indeterminacy: medium, threat, temporality. Anthropol. Theory 13:267–84 [Google Scholar]
  44. De Genova NP. 2002. Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 31:419–47 [Google Scholar]
  45. Dillon M. 2003. Virtual security: a life science of (dis)order. Millennium 32:531–58 [Google Scholar]
  46. Dobson A, Barker K, Taylor SL. 2013. Biosecurity: The Socio-Politics of Invasive Species and Infectious Diseases London: Routledge
  47. Donaldson A. 2008. Biosecurity after the event: risk politics and animal disease. Environ. Plan. A 40:1552–67 [Google Scholar]
  48. Duffy J. 1992. The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health Urbana: Univ. Ill. Press
  49. Enticott G. 2008. The spaces of biosecurity: prescribing and negotiating solutions to bovine tuberculosis. Environ. Planning A 40:1568–82 [Google Scholar]
  50. Epstein S. 1996. Impure Science. AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  51. Fassin D. 2001. The biopolitics of otherness: undocumented foreigners and racial discrimination in French public debate. Anthropol. Today 17:3–7 [Google Scholar]
  52. Fassin D. 2007. Humanitarianism as politics of life. Public Cult. 19:499–520 [Google Scholar]
  53. Fassin D. 2009. Another politics of life is possible. Theory Cult. Soc. 26:44–60 [Google Scholar]
  54. Fearnley L. 2008a. Redesigning syndromic surveillance for biosecurity. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 61–88
  55. Fearnley L. 2008b. Signals come and go: syndromic surveillance and styles of biosecurity. Environ. Plan. A 40:1615–32 [Google Scholar]
  56. Fee E, Brown TM. 2001. Preemptive biopreparedness: Can we learn anything from history?. Am. J. Public Health 91:721–26 [Google Scholar]
  57. Felman S. 2002. The Scandal of the Speaking Body: Don Juan with J. L. Austin or Seduction in Two Languages. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press
  58. Ferguson J. 1990. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
  59. Fidler DP. 2006. Biosecurity: friend or foe for public health governance. Medicine at the Border: Disease, Globalization and Security, 1850 to the Present A Bashford 196–218 Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan [Google Scholar]
  60. Foucault M. 1990. The History of Sexuality 1 An Introduction New York: Vintage
  61. Foucault M. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison New York: Vintage
  62. Foucault M. 2003. “Society Must Be Defended”. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. New York: Picador
  63. Foucault M. 2006. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 London: Palgrave
  64. Foucault M. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979 New York: Palgrave MacMillan
  65. Frow J. 2003. The uses of terror and the limits of cultural studies. Symploke 11:69–76 [Google Scholar]
  66. Garrett L. 1994. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance New York: Penguin
  67. Goldstein DM. 2010. Security and the culture expert: dilemmas of an engaged anthropology. PoLAR: Polit. Leg. Anthropol. Rev. 33:126–42 [Google Scholar]
  68. Goldstein DM. 2012. Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  69. Gros F. 2012. Le Principe Sécurité Paris: Gallimard
  70. Guillemin J. 2001. Anthrax: The Investigation of a Deadly Outbreak Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  71. Guillemin J. 2011. American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nation's Deadliest Bioterrorist Attack New York: Holt, Henry
  72. Gusterson H. 1996. Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  73. Gusterson H, Besteman C. 2009. The Insecure American: How We Got Here and What We Should Do About It Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  74. Hacking I. 2002. Inaugural lecture: chair of philosophy and history of scientific concepts at the Collège de France, 16 January 2001. Econ. Soc. 31:1–14 [Google Scholar]
  75. Helmreich S. 2005. How scientists think; about ‘natives,’ for example. A problem of taxonomy among biologists of alien species in Hawaii. J. R. Anthropol. Inst. 11:107–28 [Google Scholar]
  76. Hinchliffe S. 2010. Where species meet. Environ. Plan. D: Soc. Space 28:34–35 [Google Scholar]
  77. Hinchliffe S. 2013a. The insecurity of biosecurity: re-making infectious diseases. See Dobson et al. 2013 199–213
  78. Hinchliffe S. 2013b. Securing life: new hazards and biosecurity. Introducing Human Geographies P Cloke, P Crang, M Goodwin 864–78 London/New York: Routledge [Google Scholar]
  79. Hinchliffe S, Allen J, Lavau S, Bingham N, Carter S. 2012. Biosecurity and the topologies of infected life: from borderlines to borderlands. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 38:531–43 [Google Scholar]
  80. Hinchliffe S, Bingham N. 2008. People, animals and biosecurity in and through cities. Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City SH Ali, R Keil 214–28 Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell [Google Scholar]
  81. Hinchliffe S, Lavau S. 2013. Differentiated circuits: the ecologies of knowing and securing life. Environ. Plan. D 31:259–74 [Google Scholar]
  82. Holbraad M, Pedersen MA. 2013. Times of Security: Ethnographies of Fear, Protest and the Future New York: Routledge
  83. Holbrooke R, Garrett L. 2008. Sovereignty that risks global health. Washington Post Aug. 10: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/08/AR2008080802919.html
  84. IOM 1997. America's Vital Interest in Global Health: Protecting Our People, Enhancing Our Economy, and Advancing Our International Interests Washington, DC: Natl. Acad. Press
  85. Keck F. 2008. From mad cow disease to bird flu: transformations of food safety in France. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 195–226
  86. Keränen L. 2011. Concocting viral apocalypse: catastrophic risk and the production of bio(in)security. West. J. Commun. 75:451–72 [Google Scholar]
  87. King NB. 2002. Security, disease, commerce: ideologies of postcolonial global health. Soc. Stud. Sci. 32:763–89 [Google Scholar]
  88. King NB. 2003. The influence of anxiety: September 11, bioterrorism and American public health. J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci. 58:433–41 [Google Scholar]
  89. King NB. 2004. The scale politics of emerging diseases. Osiris 19:62–76 [Google Scholar]
  90. Kleinman AM, Bloom BR, Saich A, Mason KA, Aulino F. 2008. Asian flus in ethnographic and political context: a biosocial approach. Anthropol. Med. 15:1–5 [Google Scholar]
  91. Koch E. 2008. Disease as security threat: critical reflections on the global TB emergency. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 121–46
  92. Krause RM. 1998. Emerging Infections San Diego: Academic
  93. Lakoff A. 2007. Preparing for the next emergency. Public Cult. 19:247–71 [Google Scholar]
  94. Lakoff A. 2008a. From population to vital system: public health and the changing object of national security. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 33–60
  95. Lakoff A. 2008b. The generic biothreat, or, how we became unprepared. Cult. Anthropol. 23:399–428 [Google Scholar]
  96. Lakoff A, Collier SJ. 2008. Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question New York: Columbia Univ. Press
  97. Lederberg J. 1996. Infection emergent. JAMA 275:243–45 [Google Scholar]
  98. Lederberg J, Shope RE, Oaks SC. Comm. Emerging Microbial Threats to Health, Inst. Med. (IOM) 1992. Emerging Infections: Microbial Threats to Health in the United States Washington, DC: Natl. Acad. Press
  99. Lentzos F, Rose N. 2009. Governing insecurity: contingency planning, protection, resilience. Econ. Soc. 38:230–54 [Google Scholar]
  100. Leys Stepan N. 2011. Eradication: Ridding the World of Diseases Forever? Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press
  101. Lowe C. 2010. Viral clouds: becoming H5N1 in Indonesia. Cult. Anthropol. 25:625–49 [Google Scholar]
  102. Luhmann N. 1998. Observations on Modernity transl. W Whobrey. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press. From German
  103. MacPhail T. 2010. A predictable unpredictability. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the concept of “strategic uncertainty” within global public health. Behemoth 3:57–77 [Google Scholar]
  104. Major C. 2008. Affect work and infected bodies. biosecurity in an age of emerging infectious disease. Environ. Plan. A 40:1633–46 [Google Scholar]
  105. Mangold T, Goldberg J. 2000. Plague Wars. The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare. New York: St. Martin's
  106. Masco J. 2006. The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press
  107. Masco J. 2012. The end of ends. Anthropol. Q. 85:1107–24 [Google Scholar]
  108. Masco J. 2014. Biosecurity noir: “WMDs” in a world without borders. The Theater of Operations: National Security Affect from the Cold War to the War on Terror Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press [Google Scholar]
  109. Mason K. 2010. Becoming modern after SARS: battling the H1N1 pandemic and the politics of backwardness in China's Pearl River Delta. Behemoth 3:8–35 [Google Scholar]
  110. Mason K. 2012. Mobile migrants, mobile germs: migration, contagion, and boundary-building in Shenzhen, China after SARS. Med. Anthropol. 31:113–31 [Google Scholar]
  111. McKeown T. 1976. The Modern Rise of Population New York: Academic
  112. Mitchell T. 2002. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  113. Moore A. 2012. The aquatic invaders: marine management figuring fishermen, fisheries, and lionfish in the Bahamas. Cult. Anthropol. 27:667–88 [Google Scholar]
  114. Morse SS. 1993. Emerging Viruses Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  115. Morse SS. 1995. Factors in the emergence of infectious diseases. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 1:7–15 [Google Scholar]
  116. Napier AD. 2013. Disaster play. Soc. Anthropol. 21:57–61 [Google Scholar]
  117. Naraindas H. 2003. Crisis, charisma and triage: extirpating the pox. Indian Econ. Soc. Hist. Rev. 40:425–547 [Google Scholar]
  118. Natl. Intell. Counc. (NIC) 2000. The global infectious disease threat and its implications for the United States NIE 99-17D, Natl. Intell. Counc., Washington, DC
  119. Nerlich B, Koteyko N. 2012. Crying wolf? Biosecurity and metacommunication in the context of the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Health Place 18:710–17 [Google Scholar]
  120. Nguyen V-K. 2004. Emerging infectious diseases. Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures CR Ember, M Ember 383–91 New York: Kluwer [Google Scholar]
  121. Orr J. 2006. Panic Diaries: A Genealogy of Panic Disorder Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  122. Orzech KM, Nichter M. 2008. From resilience to resistance: political ecological lessons from antibiotic and pesticide resistance. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 37:267–82 [Google Scholar]
  123. Packard RM. 1989. White Plague, Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  124. Parry B. 2012. Domesticating biosurveillance: ‘containment’ and the politics of bioinformation. Health Place 18:718–25 [Google Scholar]
  125. Peterson K. 2014. Speculative Markets: Drug Circuits and Derivative Life in Nigeria Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  126. Porter D. 1994. The History of Public Health and the Modern State Amsterdam: Ed. Rodopi
  127. Porter N. 2013. Bird flu biopower: strategies for multispecies coexistence in Viet Nam. Am. Ethnol. 40:132–48 [Google Scholar]
  128. Povinelli EA. 2011. Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  129. Preston R. 1994. The Hot Zone New York: Random House
  130. Rappert B, Gould C. 2009. Biosecurity: Origins, Transformations and Practices Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
  131. Rappert B, Lentzos F. 2013. Biosecurity and bioterror: reflections on a decade. See Dobson et al. 2013 148–61
  132. Redfield P. 2008. Vital mobility and the humanitarian kit. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 147–72
  133. Rose D. 2008. How did the smallpox vaccination program come about? Tracing the emergence of recent smallpox vaccination thinking. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 89–120
  134. Rosen G. 1993. A History of Public Health. Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. Expand. ed.
  135. Samimian-Darash L. 2009. A pre-event configuration for biological threats: preparedness and the constitution of biosecurity events. Am. Ethnol. 36:478–91 [Google Scholar]
  136. Samimian-Darash L. 2011. The re-forming state: actions and repercussions in preparing for future biological events. Anthropol. Theory 11:283–307 [Google Scholar]
  137. Samimian-Darash L. 2013. Governing future potential biothreats: toward an anthropology of uncertainty. Curr. Anthropol. 54:1–22 [Google Scholar]
  138. Satcher D. 1995. Emerging infections: getting ahead of the curve. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 1:1–6 [Google Scholar]
  139. Schoch-Spana M. 2004. Bioterrorism: US public health and a secular apocalypse. Anthropol. Today 20:8–13 [Google Scholar]
  140. Strathern M. 2000. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy London/New York: Routledge
  141. Subramaniam B. 2001. The aliens have landed! Reflections on the rhetoric of biological invasions. Meridians 2:26–40 [Google Scholar]
  142. Sunder Rajan K. 2006. Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  143. Tomes N. 1998. The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women, and the Microbe in American Life Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press
  144. Vigh H. 2008. Crisis and chronicity: anthropological perspectives on continuous conflict and decline. Ethnos 73:5–24 [Google Scholar]
  145. Vogel K. 2006. Bioweapons proliferation: where science studies and public policy collide. Soc. Stud. Sci. 36:659–90 [Google Scholar]
  146. Vogel KM. 2008. Biodefense: considering the sociotechnical dimension. See Lakoff & Collier 2008 227–56
  147. Wald P. 2008. Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  148. Weir L, Mykhalovskiy E. 2010. Global Public Health Vigilance: Creating a World on Alert New York: Routledge
  149. Wolfe N. 2011. The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic Age New York: Holt
  150. Worboys M. 2000. Spreading Germs: Disease Theories and Medical Practice in Britain, 1865–1900 Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102313-030341
Loading
  • Article Type: Review Article

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error