CALL FOR PAPERS
Epidemic entanglements:
Exploring the interrelation between cities and infectious disease
The twenty-first century has thus far been marked by emerging and re-emerging infectious
diseases: malaria, SARS, FMD, avian flu, HIV, MDR-tuberculosis, MERS-CoV and dengue
pose some of the greatest challenges to health care worldwide. Some areas, however, appear
to be more prone to infectious disease outbreaks than others. As the example of SARS has
aptly illustrated, cities, with their high population density, complex human-animal interfaces
and global connectivity, seem to play a crucial role in the emergence and distribution, but
also in the management of pathogens. In addition, rising poverty and often poor sanitary
conditions provide a fertile breeding ground for infectious disease outbreaks. Research on the
complexity of disease ecologies has shown how urban areas and their hinterlands integrate
each other mutually through processes of exchange and change, taking place on various
levels: norms, standards and regulations as well as flows of commodities, animals, water,
people and pathogens intermingle within and among cities, questioning any attempt to
understand the urban as bounded or determinate space. These flows make their distant
origins present and at the same time assemble the city as a place of becoming and
uncertainty. Furthermore, the messy nature of globalised infectious disease aetiologies not
only poses a threat to numerous city dwellers worldwide, but might contest conventional
models of urban health governance, its institutional routines and norms.
Given the complexity and fragmentation of these epidemic entanglements, serious questions
remain: How do categories of space, the urban or the local impact on the way public health
thinks about infectious disease control? How are human-animal-pathogen interfaces enacted
differently in various contexts? How are current ontological conceptions of the city
reconfigured by locating biological agents inside the social production of urban space?
The interdisciplinary conference aims to open up the interrelation between cities and
infectious disease as a focal point of interest for the social, medical and political sciences. We
encourage contributions from diverse disciplines such as anthropology, geography, STS,
sociology, public health, political science or history. In particular, we welcome papers that
investigate the complex intermingling of urban environments and infectious disease by
focusing on the multitude of heterogeneous actors and practices involved in the aggregation,
governance and securing of urban space.
Papers may include (but are certainly not limited to) the following topics:
- Governance of infectious spaces and borderlands
- Vectors and their ecological niches and urban habitats
- Visualising disease threats
- Risk, prevention, preparedness
- Urban natures, urban wildscapes
- Vaccination policies
- Networked cities and the globalisation of pathogens
- Surveillance of urban wildlife
- Outbreak narratives
- Food chains as disease actor-networks
- Public health, urban health
- Social ordering and social significance of infectious diseases
- Border management
- Assemblage perspectives on infectious disease
- Disease ecologies
The conference is scheduled for 24th–25th July 2014 at the Institute of Cultural
Anthropology and European Ethnology, Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main. Paper proposals
(max. 350 words) together with a short biographical note (max. 50 words) and contact
The deadline for submission is 15th April 2014. Notification of acceptance: 22nd April. There
will be no extra conference fee.
Contact:
Meike Wolf
Assistant Professor
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology
Goethe-University Frankfurt
Grüneburgplatz 1
D – 60323 Frankfurt am Main
Tel: +49 69 798 32913
Steve Hinchliffe
Professor of Human Geography
Geography
College of Life and Environmental Sciences
University of Exeter
Amory Building
Rennes Drive
Exeter EX4 4RJ
UK
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Office Amory, 355a
44 (0)1392 725400
http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/geography/people/staff/s_hinchliffe/main.shtml
Biosecurity
http://biosecurity-borderlands.org
Science Technology and Culture @ Exeter
http://staclab.wordpress.com/
