Biosecurity Interventions: Global Health and Security in Question

Published by Columbia University Press 2008

Biosecurity Interventions

Global Health and Security in Question

Edited by: Andrew Lakoff and Stephen Collier

In the series A Columbia / SSRC Book

https://doi.org/10.7312/lako14606

Overview
Contents

About this book

In recent years, new disease threatssuch as SARS, avian flu, mad cow disease, and drug-resistant strains of malaria and tuberculosishave garnered media attention and galvanized political response. Proposals for new approaches to "securing health" against these threats have come not only from public health and medicine but also from such fields as emergency management, national security, and global humanitarianism.

This volume provides a map of this complex and rapidly transforming terrain. The editors focus on how experts, public officials, and health practitioners work to define what it means to "secure health" through concrete practices such as global humanitarian logistics, pandemic preparedness measures, vaccination campaigns, and attempts to regulate potentially dangerous new biotechnologies.

As the contributions show, despite impressive activity in these areas, the field of "biosecurity interventions" remains unstable. Many basic questions are only beginning to be addressed: Who decides what counts as a biosecurity problem? Who is responsible for taking action, and how is the efficacy of a given intervention to be evaluated? It is crucial to address such questions today, when responses to new problems of health and security are still taking shape. In this context, this volume offers a form of critical and reflexive knowledge that examines how technical efforts to increase biosecurity relate to the political and ethical challenges of living with risk.

Author / Editor information

Andrew Lakoff is associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Program in Science Studies, University of California, San Diego. His book Pharmaceutical Reason: Knowledge and Value in Global Psychiatry examines epistemological debates on the source of mental disorders. His current work focuses on the development of techniques of preparedness among security experts in the United States.

Stephen J. Collier is assistant professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School. He is coeditor of Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems and is completing a book on urbanism, social modernity, and neoliberal reform in contemporary Russia entitled Post-Soviet Social: "Neoliberalism" after the Washington Consensus. Currently he is engaged in research on new approaches to risk mapping and systems vulnerability.

Reviews

Sonja Kittelsen:
Provides insight into the complexity behind what it means to 'secure health.'

a thought-provoking volume that provides an important look into how far-reaching biosecurity is, while illustrating the ambiguities that still remain.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	1
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	5
1. The problem of securing health Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	7
2. From population to vital system National security and the changing object of public health Andrew Lakoff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
3. Redesigning syndromic surveillance for biosecurity Lyle Fearnley Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
4. How did the smallpox vaccination program come about? Tracing the emergence of recent smallpox vaccination thinking Dale A. Rose Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	89
5. Disease as security threat Critical reflections on the global TB emergency Erin Koch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
6. Vital mobility and the humanitarian kit Peter Redfield Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
7. Mapping the multiplicities of biosecurity Nick Bingham and Steve Hinchliffe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
8. From mad cow disease to bird flu Transformations of food safety in France Frédéric Keck Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
9. Biodefense Considering the sociotechnical dimension Kathleen M. Vogel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	227
10. Anticipations of biosecurity Carlo Caduff Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Afterword: Episodes or incidents Seeking significance Paul Rabinow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	291

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 312

eBook

Published: October 21, 2008
ISBN: 9780231511773