Celia Lowe will be giving a talk titled “More Cloudy Viral Becomings: Biosecurity in the Indonesian H5N1 Outbreak” on Thursday, September 26, 2013 12:00-2:00 PM.
Where? The Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs, 1 Devonshire Place, 108N North House. The event is Co-sponsored by Technoscience Salon Research Unit, the Department of Anthropology, Centre for Southeast Asian Studies and the Canada Research Chair in Southeast Asian History.
Register online at: http://www.munk.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=14188Who?
Abstract:
This talk extends the work of my article Viral Clouds (Cultural Anthropology 2010) that explored in multispecies terms the clusters of biosocialities in play in relation to the mid-2000s H5N1 avian
influenza outbreak in Indonesia. Here, I interrogate the experience of the Indonesian H5N1 outbreak for its links to biosecurity. Biosecurity, as an extension of the security state and an overall securitization of the social since 9/11, manifested during the outbreak in two forms: promotion of the technical intervention of on-farm biosecurity, and the geopolitical form of international pandemic preparedness. These forms are linked through fear imaginaries, yet what scared the International and Indonesian communities were often at odds.