From Threat to Risk? Exceptionalism and Logics of Health Security

Bibliographic Data

ID6272549
AuthorsJessica Kirk (0000-0002-1006-6658, The University of Queensland, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume64
Issue2
Pages266-276
Publication date2020-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/isq/sqaa021
OpenAlexW3014280727
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited64

The logic of “risk” is increasingly important in the study of global health politics. One recent contribution has even argued that risk is beginning to replace security as the defining logic of health governance and policy. Others dispute this on the basis that risk and security have always operated together in the “securitization” of disease. This article constitutes a theoretical intervention into this burgeoning debate. Does a stronger appreciation of risk warrant the diminishment of security? Are we looking at the “riskification” of health rather than “securitization”? Or would this miss the way these two logics might be complimentary or intertwined in ways that we are yet to theorize? I argue that the global health and securitization literatures are better served by an explicit consideration of risk and security logics in interplay, or never entirely encompassed by the other, nor in complete alignment, yet never truly separate. To do this, I propose a reconceptualization of the central problem—exceptionalism—that allows for risk to be understood as a form of exceptionalist politics. I demonstrate the validity of this approach through an otherwise “easy case” of securitization: the US response to the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa

Corporate governance · Economics · Exceptionalism · Financial economics · International relations · International security · Law and economics · Management · Political science · Politics · Securitization · Sociology · Warrant · Global Security and Public Health · Health and Conflict Studies · Law · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research