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Pandemic cities: biopolitical effects of changing infection control in post‐SARS Hong Kong
Author(s) -
Füller Henning
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the geographical journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.071
H-Index - 64
eISSN - 1475-4959
pISSN - 0016-7398
DOI - 10.1111/geoj.12179
Subject(s) - biopower , pandemic , social control , ideology , covid-19 , sociology , political science , social science , politics , law , medicine , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , pathology
The growing fear of an emerging pandemic has facilitated efforts in infection control, where new technologies and laws have been introduced nationally and at the level of WHO. This renewed emphasis on infection control is changing the character of global health. This is well described as a securitisation of global health. Less clear is how an ‘emerging diseases worldview’ does play out on an urban scale. The city has historically been the preferred site for biopolitical interventions, which poses a question about the biopolitics of the ‘pandemic city’. Severely experiencing the SARS epidemic in 2003, Hong Kong may be an exemplary case in this regard. Focusing on ways of governing un/healthy bodies in post‐SARS Hong Kong, the article details a refined biopolitics, where longstanding mechanisms of social exclusion are combined with enhanced forms of social control through a mix of architectural, ideological and intelligence‐gathering processes.