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- Convenors:
-
Alena Kamenshchikova
(Maastricht University)
Andrea Butcher (University of Helsinki)
Catherine Will (University of Sussex)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
- Location:
- HG-02A00
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam
Short Abstract:
The movements of humans and non-humans across the world become seen as risky or desirable depending on what, who, how and when is crossing the borders. This panel engages with these diverse mobilities and reflects upon the complex intersections of health, security and care in a mobile world.
Long Abstract:
We live in an interconnected world with continuous movements by humans and non-humans across boundaries of bodies, settlements, ecologies and states. Connectivity and separation, transmission and control span national and international discussions on health emergencies, border security, migration, capitalism, and global health. Transmission and mobility of microbes is seen as undesirable when it has the potential to cause infection, while movements of "microbial containers" such as labour within a single market economy, or commercial movement of food products or antimicrobials in global trade can be seen as economically desirable. In other words, the scope and consequences of movements radically differs depending on what, who, how and when is doing the crossing.
Scholarship in STS has explored the intersections of epidemics, surveillance, governance, and policy, highlighting the contentions and co-creation of practices around security and care. Research has also pointed to the racialised and marginalising assumptions that draw problematic parallels between microbes and risky bodies, species, and sites. At the same time, international guidelines seek to read across borders, and create another singular and often standardised world.
In this panel, we invite scholars to reflect on the implications and translations of these connections in different realms of human and animal health as they are situated in various fields of regulation, economy and science. We invite contributions reflecting upon topics such as, but not limited to
(1) The research, technologies and policies at the complex intersections of health, security, risk and care in the context of the mobile world;
(2) The existing practices and case studies of inter- and transdisciplinarity that analyse movements across borders, disciplines and species;
(3) The productive ways to reimagine dichotomies of the interconnected yet bordered world to meaningfully engage with global mobilities and policy regimes built around them.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2024, -Long abstract:
The economic integration of European Union countries aims to assure that goods and services can be moved across geo-political borders without hindrance. These are desirable movements that lead to economic growth. When considering people who move those goods - labour migrants - the integration discussion becomes less unhindered. While labour migrants, and in particular those who perform manual labour, are moved across geo-political borders to contribute to the growing economies of host countries, they are often not seen to be risky as long as they are restrained within the economic boundaries of their workplace (they exist outside of local communities). At the same time, literature reflecting the care continuity for labour migrants has drawn attention to the infrastructural and immobile character of this care. When people cross the boundaries from being international labour migrants to migrant patients in need of care, their bodies shift from being economic assets to being multispecies strangers – potential carriers of infections. In his reflection on the making of strangers in the postmodern world, Bauman highlighted that it is “their tendency to befog and eclipse boundary lines which ought to be clearly seen” that turn individuals into strangers. In this paper, I reflect upon the making of such strangers in the multispecies world;, locating the discussion on labour migration, market integration and care within the STS literature on multispecies coexistence.
Short abstract:
Despite constrained communication, hindered by a hierarchical reporting system, Hong Kong scientists significantly contributed to SARS research. This study unveils cross-border research networks beyond governmental structures, illuminating the role of legacy and trust in outbreak collaborations.
Long abstract:
South China, an influenza reservoir and the origin of significant outbreaks like SARS and COVID-19, has had a global impact extending beyond political boundaries. Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China since 1997, possesses a unique medical legacy shaped by its British past. The influx of medical officials during colonial rule fostered the growth of medical knowledge and disease ecology, resulting in world-class medical facilities by the handover in 1997. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s geographical proximity to South China, especially its neighbouring province Guangdong, has exposed it to infectious diseases while also fostering cross-border collaborations and contributions to medical knowledge, notably in tropical medicine.
This distinctive context makes Hong Kong an ideal research site to explore the cross-border spread of microbes and collaborations. Focusing on the SARS outbreak, this paper examines how Hong Kong managed the crisis, emphasizing cross-border communication and collaboration with Guangdong. Despite the proximity, Hong Kong experienced delays in learning about the SARS outbreak from Guangdong, revealing the shortcomings in mainland China’s hierarchical reporting system. However, despite the delay and the lack of direct communication between provinces, Hong Kong’s scientists made significant contributions to SARS research. This paper thus aims to unveil how scientists’ cross-border networks extend beyond governmental structures between Hong Kong and the mainland. Ultimately, this study seeks to illuminate the convergence of state policies, regional authorities, and scientists’ networks in outbreak responses.
Short abstract:
This paper considers the use of maps in Antimicrobial Resistance research. Drawing upon multidisciplinary fieldwork from Benin and Bangladesh, I reflect upon previous mapping exercises, and ask how an STS sensibility can be utilised to produce socially representative, ethically responsible AMR maps.
Long abstract:
Mapping is a key method for communicating antimicrobial resistance prevalence and abundance globally. Maps are deployed either as diagrams of the spatial distribution and/or concentration of resistance genes (e.g. Hendriksen et al. 2019), or as systems maps that plot factors influencing resistance evolution and interactions between them (e.g. Matthiessen et al. 2022). Plotted from the results of microbiological and molecular analysis, such maps are invaluable sources for drawing attention to the pervasiveness of the AMR problem. However, achieving such statistical scalability requires what anthropologist Anna Tsing (2014) calls the removal of “nuisance” social relations that threaten the standardisation upon which scale relies. In the process of enacting a mapping exercise space and place are decontextualised of the social and material relations that produce them, and defined instead as risk “hotspots”, requiring intervention to prevent global AMR mobility. Nevertheless, as Tsing’s scalability critique cautions, such social and material relations remain in situ, and their technoscientific erasure or denial risks leaving vulnerable geographies and economies open to accusations of causality and responsibility for situations over which they have little control.
This paper considers the history and use of mapping in AMR research. Drawing upon multidisciplinary fieldwork from Benin and Bangladesh, I reflect upon the possibility that collaborative mapping exercises with research participants will more effectively plot biosocial relations of AMR production and the determinants of microbial mobility - and ask how an STS sensibility can be utilised to produce more socially representative and ethically responsible AMR maps.