Riding the Shi

From Infection Barriers to the Microbial City

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2236871
AutoresNadine Voelkner (0000-0002-4310-8025, University of Groningen, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume13
Fascículo4
Páginas375-391
Data de publicação2019-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Political Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1749-5679 • E-ISSN: 1749-5687
DOI10.1093/ips/olz016
PMID34191935
OpenAlexW2909574324
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas15
Referências citadas39

How can a microbial approach to global health security protect life? Contemporary infection control mechanisms set the human and the pathogenic microbe against each other, as the victim versus the menace. This biomedical polarization persistently runs through the contemporary dominant mode of thinking about public health and infectious disease governance. Taking its cue from the currently accepted germ theory of disease, such mechanisms render a global city like Hong Kong not only pervasively 'on alert' and under threat of unpredictable and pathogenic viruses and other microbes, it also gives rise to a hygiene and antimicrobial politics that is never entirely able to control pathogenic circulation. The article draws on recent advances in medical microbiology, which depart from germ theory, to invoke an ecological understanding of the human-microbe relation. Here, while a small number of viruses are pathogenic, the majority are benign; some are even essential to human life. Disease is not just the outcome of a pathogenic microbe infecting a human host but emerges from socioeconomic relations, which exacerbate human-animal-microbial interactions. In a final step, the article draws on Daoist thought to reflect on the ways that such a microbial understanding translates into life and city dwelling

Biology · Disease · Environmental ethics · Environmental health · Germ theory of disease · Human animal · Human health · Infectious disease (medical specialty · Political science · Politics · Public health · Sociology · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Medicine · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Ecology · Law · Microbiology