Epidemics in the Era of Globalization Pre-readings

1. Davis, Mike. Selections from The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. New York: Henry Holt, 2006. 3-8, 21-30, 81-96, 127-38. PDF file

Davis' book asks what avian flu is trying to tell us about the state of our earth. In the chapters included here, Davis sets avian flu in a longer history of both human and animal disease, looking at both the 1918 influenza pandemic and recent poultry and livestock epidemics. He also discusses the U.S. government's response to the threat.

2. Garrett, Laurie. "The Challenge of Global Health." Foreign Affairs 86.1 (2007): 14-38. PDF file

In this paper, Garrett considers how current global health goals might be met, looking in particular at the difficulty of administering aid effectively, and of retaining health care personnel in the developing world.

3. Hacking, Ian. "The Making and Molding of Child Abuse." Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 253-88. PDF file

In this essay, Hacking traces the history of child abuse in order to think about how human kinds are formed and molded (how people and their actions are affected by the way that we classify or describe them). Hacking remarks the recent explosion of concern about child abuse, and asks what it means to deploy medical models (of diseases or syndromes) in describing such a phenomenon.

4. Harvey, David. "The Body as an Accumulation Strategy." Spaces of Hope. Berkeley: U of California P, 2000. 97-116. PDF file

Harvey joins other contemporary theorists interested in "the body," but he proposes that we understand the body differently: as a relational 'thing' shaped by socio-ecological processes. Harvey argues that such a relational understanding can help us to connect thinking about the body to thinking about globalization, and he turns to Marx in order to consider what happens to bodies under capitalistic globalization.

5. Kwik, Gigi, Joe Fitzgerald, Thomas Inglesby, and Tara O'Toole. "Bio-Security: Responsible Stewardship of Bioscience in an Age of Catastrophic Terrorism." Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science 1.1 (2003): 27-35. PDF file

This paper, from the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, charts current debates about whether and how to more closely govern the practice of biological research in the interest of national security.

6. Miles, Steven. "Abu Ghraib: its lesson for military medicine." Lancet 364 (2004): 725-29. PDF file

This article looks at the role of US military medical personnel in the abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

7. Watney, Simon. "Missionary Positions: AIDS, Africa, and Race." in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Cambridge, Mass: New Museum of Contemporary Art and MIT Press, 1990. PDF file

Watney's essay considers the interests and anxieties that inform Western commentary on HIV/AIDS in Africa: commentary which, Watney argues, redraws the epidemic in the likeness of older colonial beliefs and values. Watney suggests that commentary on "African AIDS" tells us little about AIDS in Africa, but much about the changing organization of sexual and racial boundaries in the West.

---