Epidemic Entanglements : Exploring the interrelation between cities
and infectious disease

Interdiscipilinary Conference
24th - 25th July 2014

Goethe University Frankfurt / Main
Institute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology


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.


Thursday 24th July
11:00 - Registration
12:30 - Welcome (Iwo Amelung, Dean of the Faculty)
Introduction (Meike Wolf, Kevin Hall, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main)

Session 1 - Disease Ecologies
Chair: Meike Wolf

13:00 - The politics of entanglement in urban Nicaragua?s dengue
epidemics (Alex Nading, Franklin & Marshall College)
13:30 - Typhoid fever: the murdrous product of the natural, settlement
and disease ecologies that developed in nineteenth century Prahran
(Natasha Szuhan, University of Melbourne)
14:00 - Beyond bioinsecurities? Reflections on endemic human-virus
relations (Beth Greenhough, Queen Mary University of London)

14:30 - Coffee break


Session 2 - Immunity and Public Health
Chair: Britta Lundgren

14:45 - Resistant bodies: local biologies of malaria and the question
of resistance/immunity (Uli Beisel, University of Bayreuth)
15:15 - Standardization of vaccination in the context of
democratization of expertise (Els Geelen, Klasien Horstman, Hans van
Vliet, Pieter de Hoogh,
  Maastricht University)
15:45 - Disease securing and stigmatisation during the 2005-2007
chikungunya epidemic in Réunion (Karine Aasgaard Jansen, Umeå
University)

16:15 - Coffee break


Session 3 - Politics of Inclusion / Politics of Exclusion
Chair: Andrew Donaldson

16:30 - Biosecurity and the city. Post-SARS Hong Kong and the
governing of un/healthy bodies. (Henning Füller,
Friedrich-Alexander-Univerität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
17:00 - Buenos Aires at the time of cholera. 1867-1869. Fear, piety
and urban space. (Antonio Carbone, Center for Metropolitan Studies TU
Berlin)
17:30 - Brothels, hostels and hospitals: the city streets of syphilis
in early 20th century Lisbon (Cristiana Bastos, University of Lisbon)

19:30 - Conference Dinner


Friday 25th July

Session 4 - Articulation of Emergence
Chair: Kevin Hall

09:00 - Emerging infectious diseases: challenges for understanding and
communication of risks (Márcia Grisotti, Federal University of Santa
Catarina)
09:30 - Commerce or containment? Avian flu and the politics of poultry
market closures in Hanoi. (Natalie Porter, University of New Hampshire)
10:00 - Perspectives and problems of digital epidemiology (Klaus
Scheuermann, Leon Hempel, Edward Velasco, Tim Eckmanns, Human
Technology Lab TU Berlin / Robert Koch Institute)
10:30 - Hong Kong as a sentinel post for pandemic flu (Frédéric Keck,
Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale / Musée du quai Branly)

11:00 - Coffee break


Session 5 - Biosecurity and Preparedness
Chair: Uli Beisel

11:30 - Cities in an age of biosecurity: infrastructures, ecologies
and assemblage (Andrew Donaldson, New Castle University)
12:00 - The object of regulation: tending the tensions of food safety
(Nick Bingham, Open University)
12:30 - Zombie survival: preparing for and acting upon imagined
epidemics (Maximilian Mehner, Philipps-Universität Marburg)

13:00 - Lunch


Session 6 - International Law and Global Health
Chair: Henning Füller

13:45 - Back to the League of Nations ? evaluation of the
environmental regime and the campaign against diseases and plagues:
1919-1939 (Omer Aloni, Tel Aviv University)
14:15 - Regulating epidemic space: the nomos of global circulation
(Sven Opitz, Universität Hamburg)


14:45 - Wrap up
15:00 - End


Venue
Goethe University Frankfurt / Main
Campus Westend, IG 311
Grüneburgplatz 1
60323 Frankfurt / Main
Germany

Registration
The conference is free of charge.
Registration via email is required:
[log in to unmask]

Organisation
Meike Wolf
Assistant professor
Tel: +49 69 798 32913
Mail: [log in to unmask]

Kevin Hall
Research assistant
Tel: +49 69 798 32918
Mail: [log in to unmask]

Insitute of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology
Goethe University Frankfurt / Main
Grüneburgplatz 1
60323 Frankfurt / Main
Germany

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