Description

As governments imposed strategies of controls in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lynette J. Chua and Jack Jin Gary Lee devised the concept of “governing through contagion” to critically analyze the power and workings of these controls that sought to contain, discipline, and educate diverse populations in the face of contagious threats. Governing through contagion, recursively produced by such strategies of control, flexes power over life to regulate subjects of a population to ensure their bodies are free from contagion, do not spread contagion to fellow subjects, and stay economically productive—or at least, avoid incurring the economic costs of medicine and containment.
Governing through contagion extends far beyond the current pandemic. The strategies of control in response to COVID-19, such as quarantine orders and movement restrictions, grew out of earlier episodes of contagion, for example, the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), the plague, cholera, and small pox. These strategies also circulated across borders through the global forces of capitalism, colonialism, and international bodies like the League of Nations and the World Health Organization. Governing through contagion, therefore, concerns the administration and politics of strategies of control to combat contagious diseases across time and space.
In this international workshop, a diverse group of scholars from Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas will convene and collaborate to explore the histories, workings, and limits of governing through contagion across contexts. Designed to foster empirical and theoretical debate and discussion, this workshop takes the form of interconnected panels that are oriented toward a global understanding of governing through contagion: we examine state and policy formation, the regulation of subject populations, dissent and authoritarian power, social boundaries and exclusion, and legal and built infrastructures. Based on our collective deliberations, Chua, Lee, and selected workshop participants will craft an edited book for publication.

View the Call for Papers HERE.