Disentangling war and disease in post-conflict Colombia beyond technoscientific peacemaking

Bibliographic Data

ID4833223
AuthorsLina Pinto García (York University, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume2
Issue1
Pages94-111
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTapuya Latin American Science Technology and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2572-9861 • E-ISSN: 2572-9861
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/25729861.2018.1532779
OpenAlexW2912780949
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited26

In November 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement to end a 52-year war. In the context of the peace deal implementation, I ethnographically traced entanglements of biomedicine, public health and the armed conflict across shifting temporalities and realities of war and peace. Through an exploration of past, present and future (dis)entanglements of war and leishmaniasis - a vector-borne disease known by many in Colombia as "the subversive disease" or the "guerrilla disease" - this article traces a discourse that frames health problems, like leishmaniasis, only as scientific or technological challenges. Drawing on STS critiques of future-oriented timelines in technoscience and the concept of pharmaceuticalization, I argue that the expectations embedded in technoscientific innovation problematically limit the possibilities of disentangling leishmaniasis and war in post-conflict Colombia. In contrast, ethnographically exploring how health policies and biomedicine have nurtured violence and exclusion helps us destabilize the warfare-loaded meaning and experience of leishmaniasis. This approach enables us to move beyond imaginaries of technoscientific peacemaking, which I define as the excessive trust endowed to technoscience to (re)build a peaceful future, especially when we are faced with failures in understanding the involvement of technoscience in the production and perpetuation of violence

Biomedicine · Peacemaking · Technoscience · Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research · Global Security and Public Health · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations

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