Governing through time: preparing for future threats to health and security

Abstract

During preparations for the Second Gulf War, Israel considered universal smallpox vaccination. In doing so, it faced a problem: how to legitimise carrying out a security action against an uncertain future danger (smallpox pandemic), when this action carried specific, known risks (vaccine complications). To solve this problem, the Israeli preparedness system created a new domain through which the security action could reach its goal with minimum risk: first responders (a group of medical personnel and security forces). First-responder vaccination represents a shift in the form of 'securing health' and in the governmental technology applied to this goal, in which past, present, and future occurrences are governed to enable the execution of a security action. Through this practice, risks are not located in the present or in the future but in a 'shared' temporal space and thus can be seen as existing simultaneously. Preparedness for emerging future biological events, then, involves more than questioning how the future is contingent on the present and how the present is contingent on the future's perception; it also recognises the need for a new time positioning that allows operating on both present and future risks simultaneously. Governing these risks, then, means governing through time.

Biological Warfare Plan in the 17th Century—the Siege of Candia, 1648–1669

“…Some guidelines have been developed during a crisis and in the absence of experimental data or investigations, such as in the case of the letters filled with a powder containing anthrax ( Bacillus anthracis ) spores in the United States in 2001 ( 36 ) or the order for smallpox vaccination in Israel during the preparation for the Second Gulf War ( 37 ). A concept of a modern system of preparedness could be that the risks are not located in the present or in the future but in a shared temporal space and thus can be seen to exist simultaneously ( 37 ).…”

“…A concept of a modern system of preparedness could be that the risks are not located in the present or in the future but in a shared temporal space and thus can be seen to exist simultaneously ( 37 ). …”

Uncertainty work and temporality in psychiatry: how clinicians and patients experience and manage risk in practice?

“…In the organisation of psychiatric care, risk and uncertainty are also perceived in relation to the predictive knowledge derived from the past and the present of the patient's life to prevent future harm or assess benefits (Alaszewski & Burgess, 2007;Samimian-Darash, 2011). The experiences of the patients' personal time can sometimes conflict with the social or abstract time in health care, when the linear and standardised time of an organisation seems to oppress the patient's experience of the illness in the present (Klingemann, 2000;Juhila et al;Alaszewski & Brown, 2016).…”

Governmentality, new population and subjectivity

“…This type of administration, or the creation of statistical populations, is mainly referred to in the literature in the context of insurance or disease, or in relation to preparations for possible biological events (O'Malley, 2004;Samimian Darash, 2011).…”