Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security

Keränen, Lisa

doi:10.1080/10570314.2011.614507

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Haynes (2002) claims that the emergence of HIV/AIDS in the early 1980s shattered the Cold War illusion of security and containment, inciting morbid fears about contamination. Similarly, looking at the cases of SARS and Ebola, scholars coined concepts such as ‘the new normal’ (Hooker and Aliis, 2009) and ‘catastrophic terrorism’ (Keränen, 2011) to explain how the globalized world in the post-9/11 era is being constructed as newly and inherently insecure. These terms envision a world in which the security of territorial borders and the sovereignty of nation-states have faded, as the world is increasingly exposed to de-territorialized threats, such as ‘viral invasions’ or ‘bioterrorism’ (Keränen, 2011).…”

Section: Discursive Themes Around Global Infectious Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

Outbreak news production as a site of tension: Journalists’ news-making of global infectious disease

Kim

2020

Journalism

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News media play a crucial role during infectious disease outbreaks because they shape people’s understanding of not only the disease itself but also the meaning of living in a ‘risk society’, which is imagined as newly and inherently insecure due to the transnational nature of global crises. As a result, studies on media narratives of infectious diseases have explored the issues of territoriality and national security by examining the discursive themes that undergird outbreak news. However, less is known about how these narratives are constructed through professional practice and the experience of those who create news. How journalists balance the interests of their local audience with the interconnected, interdependent aspects of these global events is the central question of this article. Interviewing journalists from the US, the UK, and South Korea who have reported on recent infectious disease outbreaks, I analyzed the news production of global outbreaks by examining the inner struggles, negotiations, and external forces that shape outbreak news. The findings suggest that journalistic practice in the context of global health crises is structured by tensions and contradictions: journalists conceptualize infectious diseases both as ‘foreign’ threats and ‘shared’ problems, try to find a balance between different value systems of newsworthiness such as cultural proximity and global outlook, and simultaneously internalize and resist the existing conventions of the ‘outbreak narrative’.

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Section: Discursive Themes Around Global Infectious Diseasementioning

confidence: 99%

Outbreak news production as a site of tension: Journalists’ news-making of global infectious disease

Kim

2020

Journalism

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“…The threat of an unknown disease and its potential global spread triggered extraordinary media coverage around the world. Depending on the analytical standpoint, the SARS incident either demonstrates ‘dramatically the global havoc that can be wreaked by a newly emerging disease’ (WHO , 2), or it may be considered a prime example for the current power of the imagination of a ‘Viral Apocalypse’ (Keränen ). As Lisa Keränen argues, the media attention given to emerging diseases seems rather unbalanced just given the actual number of fatalities.…”

Section: The Case Study Of Hong Kongmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much deadlier threats do not receive comparable coverage. Instead, the recurrent interest can be explained by the special power of the ‘Viral Apocalypse’ trope, a ‘cultural form [that] invigorates anxieties about globalization and its increasing contact with the Other into a vivid but distressing postpandemic future’ (Keränen , 461). Concerns about pandemics prompt media attention, large‐scale funding and action much more than do regularly occurring killers such as food‐borne pathogens or phone‐related traffic accidents.…”

Section: The Case Study Of Hong Kongmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pandemic cities: biopolitical effects of changing infection control in post‐SARS Hong Kong

Füller

2016

Geographical Journal

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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.

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“…As such, the article interrogates how the regime reconfigured social relationships, meanings and identities embedded in places and spaces where people interact with each other and with food and water to produce varnishing foodscapes and waterscapes ( Okorie, Mphambukeli, & Amusan, 2019 ; Okorie & Ajayi, 2019 ) It, also, addresses ethical quandaries; altruism and egoism arising as the brutal violence of COVID-19 regime ripples through highly vulnerable homes and informal economy, sustaining a majority of the Nigerian citizens. The article, thus, contributes to a fledging literature on necropolitical landscape of places in the era of borderless bio-insecurity ( Nading, 2015 ; Keränen, 2011 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Youths' violent resistance of necropolitical landscape of COVID-19 in Nigeria's vanishing foodscapes and waterscapes

Okorie

Amusan

2021

Social Sciences & Humanities Open

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This article interrogates the necropolitical landscape of COVID-19 in Nigeria. The article explores how the landscape emerges at the intersection of COVID-19 regime and structural violence and materializes in foodscapes and waterscapes of the country. It, also, analyzes ethical quandaries arising as the brutal violence of the regime is amplified by structural violence in places and spaces of residence, recreation, leisure and labor of ordinary people. Using qualitative data derived from primary and secondary sources, the article demonstrates that the necropolitical landscape reconfigures social relationships, meanings and identities embedded in places and spaces where people interact with each other and with food and water to produce youth's violent resistance as well as varnishing foodscapes and waterscapes. These changes ultimately impose the status of a living-dead on ordinary people in Nigeria. The article concludes that without the provision of adequate palliative, devoid of food fraud, geography of corruption, gender and ethnic-biases to every citizen, the government loses its moral ground to implement its COVID-19 regime. To meet the gap between what Nigeria can afford and what is required to implement the regime, both the government and its financial elites must embrace economic justice. Finally, the government should opt for a modified regime that factors the extant material conditions of the have-nots into the arrangement.

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Concocting Viral Apocalypse: Catastrophic Risk and the Production of Bio(in)security

Cited by 13 publications

References 45 publications

Outbreak news production as a site of tension: Journalists’ news-making of global infectious disease

Outbreak news production as a site of tension: Journalists’ news-making of global infectious disease

Pandemic cities: biopolitical effects of changing infection control in post‐SARS Hong Kong

Youths' violent resistance of necropolitical landscape of COVID-19 in Nigeria's vanishing foodscapes and waterscapes

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