In Bioinsecurities Neel Ahuja argues that U.S. imperial expansion has been shaped by the attempts of health and military officials to control the interactions of humans, animals, viruses, and bacteria at the borders of U.S. influence, a phenomenon called the government of species. The book explores efforts to control the spread of Hansen's disease, venereal disease, polio, smallpox, and HIV through interventions linking the continental United States to Hawai'i, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Congo, Iraq, and India in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Ahuja argues that racial fears of contagion helped to produce public optimism concerning state uses of pharmaceuticals, medical experimentation, military intervention, and incarceration to regulate the immune capacities of the body. In the process, the security state made the biological structures of human and animal populations into sites of struggle in the politics of empire, unleashing new patient activisms and forms of resistance to medical and military authority across the increasingly global sphere of U.S. influence.

In Bioinsecurities Neel Ahuja argues that U.S. imperial expansion has been shaped by the attempts of health and military officials to control the interactions of humans, animals, viruses, and bacteria at the borders of U.S. influence, a phenomenon called the government of species. The book explores efforts to control the spread of Hansen's disease, venereal disease, polio, smallpox, and HIV through interventions linking the continental United States to Hawai'i, Panamá, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Congo, Iraq, and India in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Ahuja argues that racial fears of contagion helped to produce public optimism concerning state uses of pharmaceuticals, medical experimentation, military intervention, and incarceration to regulate the immune capacities of the body. In the process, the security state made the biological structures of human and animal populations into sites of struggle in the politics of empire, unleashing new patient activisms and forms of resistance to medical and military authority across the increasingly global sphere of U.S. influence.

Avian influenza is considered a "global threat" and a biosecurity issue. How did that come to be? How did the avian influenza threat change as the virus spread? This book offers detailed, empirical accounts of avian influenza as the virus-and the knowledge about it -spread beyond Asia, from 2005 onwards. It also offers insights into how the concept of biosecurity has emerged in relation to recent disease outbreaks. Based on multi-sited fieldwork in Turkey and textual analyses, Translocal Connections of Bioinsecurity contributes to new ways of understanding text and field, the global and the local, and the secure and the insecure, as relational rather than opposed or unconnected, as enacted rather than pre-given. Dissertation. (Series: Civil Security. Documents on Security Research / Zivile Sicherheit. Schriften zum Fachdialog Sicherheitsforschung, Vol. 14) [Subject: Bioinsecurity, Avian Influenza, Security Studies]

In recent years medicalization, the process of making something medical, has gained considerable ground and a position in everyday discourse. In this multidisciplinary collection of original essays, the authors expertly consider how issues around medicalization have developed, ways in which it is changing, and the potential shapes it will take in the future. They develop a unique argument that medicalization, biomedicalization, pharmaceuticalization and geneticization are related and co-evolving processes, present throughout the globe. This is an ideal addition to anthropology, sociology and STS courses about medicine and health.

Life today is rife with rapid-fire "high alert" responses, a proliferating trend that is especially pronounced in the United States (though most certainly felt elsewhere as well), where past catastrophes shape expanding perceptions of imminent danger. September 11, 2001 looms as an inescapable spectral presence, defining an important baseline for the ramping up of biosecurity measures. However, the contributors to this volume argue against biosecurity as the new status quo by focusing instead on the ugly underbelly. Through considering the vulnerability of individuals and groups and particularly looking at how vulnerability propagates in the shadow of biosecurity, BioInsecurity and Vulnerability challenges the acceptance of surveillance measures or security interventions as necessities of life in the new millennium.

Forget everything you think you know about Nature. Fahim Amir’s award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is Nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political? In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir’s magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fuzzballs into shameless centrefold models for eco-capitalism. As paws, cLaws, talons, and hooves seize the means of production, Being and Swine spirals higher and higher into a heady thesis that becomes more convincing by the minute. At the heart of Amir’s writing is a deep optimism and bracingly fresh reading of Marxist, post-colonial, and feminist theory, building upon the radical scholarship of Donna J. Haraway and others. Contrarian, whip-smart, and wildly innovative, no other book will laugh at your convictions quite like this one.

Fifty-plus years of media fearmongering coupled with targeted breed bans have produced what could be called “America’s Most Wanted” dog: the pit bull. However, at the turn of the twenty-first century, competing narratives began to change the meaning of “pit bull.” Increasingly represented as loving members of mostly white, middle-class, heteronormative families, pit bulls and pit bull–type dogs are now frequently seen as victims rather than perpetrators, beings deserving not fear or scorn but rather care and compassion. Drawing from the increasingly contentious world of human/dog politics and featuring rich ethnographic research among dogs and their advocates, Bad Dog explores how relationships between humans and animals not only reflect but actively shape experiences of race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, breed, and species. Harlan Weaver proposes a critical and queer reading of pit bull politics and animal advocacy, challenging the zero-sum logic through which care for animals is seen as detracting from care for humans. Introducing understandings rooted in examinations of what it means for humans to touch, feel, sense, and think with and through relationships with nonhuman animals, Weaver suggests powerful ways to seek justice for marginalized humans and animals together.