Plagues, Peoples, Politics

In this time of uncertainty, while seeking to understand the dynamics of globalized biopolitics and the agential potential of the other-than-human novel coronavirus, Security Dialogue offers reading for the quarantined on the subject of epidemiology and pandemics, the management of global health, and the politics of resilience. These scholars have long been concerned with those exceptional measures justified by emergency, the logistical issues of pharmaceutical distribution, epidemiological surveillance and mapping, and their work provides important analysis that might be applied to the understanding of our contemporary condition, without the rush of its immediacy.  In mid-March 2020, we are at the beginning of what we estimate to be enormous change in our quotidian, daily lives in the name of “social distancing” and states of emergency, measures which may last weeks, months, or perhaps recur with each new emergence. The modality of public life is challenged by the virality of COVID-19, and well as the prevalent managerial discourses of risk management, the political competencies of the liberal state, the uses of states of emergency, and the meaning of social care and responsibility. While health care systems have been under the pressure of liberal open markets to cut slack and inefficiencies, it now faces a lack of surge capacity in the face of this pandemic. While we are struggling to make meaning of these new changes, it is urgent and important to trace back previous crises and how we reacted.

To read the full introduction, please click here.

Mark B. Salter

Assembling European health security: Epidemic intelligence and the hunt for cross-border health threats
Louise Bengtsson, Stefan Borg, Mark Rhinard
Volume 50, Issue 2, 2019

Catching the flu: Syndromic surveillance, algorithmic governmentality and global health security
Stephen L Roberts, Stefan Elbe
Volume 48, Issue 1, 2017

WHO decides on the exception? Securitization and emergency governance in global health
Tine Hanrieder, Christian Kreuder-Sonnen
Volume 45, Issue 4, 2014

Securing circulation pharmaceutically: Antiviral stockpiling and pandemic preparedness in the European Union
Stefan Elbe, Anne Roemer-Mahler, Christopher Long
Volume 45, Issue 5, 2014

Emergent emergency response: Speed, event suppression and the chronopolitics of resilience
Chris Zebrowski
Volume 50, Issue 2, 2019

Resilience and (in) security: Practices, subjects, temporalities
Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Mareile Kaufmann, Kristian Søby Kristensen
Volume 46, Issue 1, 2015

Anticipating emergencies: Technologies of preparedness and the matter of security
Peter Adey, Ben Anderson
Volume 43, Issue 2, 2012

Managing pathogenic circulation: Human security and the migrant health assemblage in Thailand
Nadine Voelkner
Volume 42, Issue 3, 2011