Pandemics on the Radar Screen

Health Security, Infectious Disease and the Medicalisation of Insecurity

Bibliographic Data

ID6345946
AuthorsStefan Elbe (0000-0002-5567-5262, University of Sussex, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume59
Issue4
Pages848-866
Publication date2011-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0032-3217 • E-ISSN: 1467-9248
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9248.2011.00921.x
OpenAlexW1777622629
LanguageEN
Citations received32
References cited19

How is the rise of global health security transforming contemporary practices of security? To date the literature on global health security has sought to trace how the securitisation of global health is affecting the governance of diseases in the international system; yet no-one has analysed – conversely – how the practices of security also begin subtly to change when they become concerned with a growing number of contemporary health issues. This article identifies three such changes. First, health security debates endow our understandings of security and insecurity in contemporary world politics with an important medical dimension. Second, the rise of global health security enables a range of medical and public health experts to play a greater role in the formulation and analysis of contemporary security policy. Finally, health security debates have also encouraged attempts to secure populations through recourse to a growing array of pharmacological interventions and new medical countermeasures. Drawing upon a rich literature in medical sociology, these three transformations in the contemporary practice of security collectively constitute the ‘medicalisation of security’. This novel perspective on the rise of global health security also reveals new limitations inherent in the emerging health–security interface – limitations associated not so much with the processes of ‘securitisation’ already noted in the global health literature, but rather with wider social processes of ‘medicalisation’. Awareness of the additional limitations renders the threat of a future pandemic even more serious than is commonly thought

Cloud computing security · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Critical security studies · Disease · Economic growth · Economics · Global health · Health care · Health security · Human security · Infectious disease (medical specialty · International security · Network security policy · Pandemic · Political economy · Political science · Public health · Security studies · Social science · Sociology · Global Security and Public Health · Health and Conflict Studies · Law · Medicine · Public Administration · Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research

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