Securing Life

The Emerging Practices of Biosecurity

Bibliographic Data

ID4139524
AuthorsSteve Hinchliffe (0000-0002-0698-8924, The Open University), Nick Bingham (0000-0002-0037-9386, The Open University)
Year2008
Volume40
Issue7
Pages1534-1551
Publication date2008-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning A Economy and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0308-518X • E-ISSN: 1472-3409
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/a4054
OpenAlexW2000657013
LanguageEN
Citations received159
References cited49

In this paper we review recent social science work on the issue of biosecurity and suggest ways in which geographers and social scientists can approach and intervene in current biosecurity practices. Our argument is that it is both useful and necessary to locate and intervene at sites where the ordering of biomatters is open to doubt and/or contestation. We pitch discourses of biological immanence and emergence against forms of social science thinking which tend to trace overarching logics or seemingly unstoppable forces in matters of power and politics. While acknowledging the import of both literatures, our aim is to engage with the fraught empirical practicalities of making biomatters secure in order to bring to the fore the ways in which life matters are patterned by any number of processes and the ways in which these patterns are always conditional on sociomaterial contingencies

Argument (complex analysis · Biopower · Biosecurity · Business · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Immanence · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics · Engineering · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Race, Genetics, and Society · Zoonotic diseases and public health · Ecology · Law

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