Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability The SAR seminar from which this book resulted was made possible with the generous support of the Paloheimo Foundation. School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar Series Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability Contributors Steven C. Caton Department of Anthropology, Harvard University Nancy N. Chen Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz Joseph Masco Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago Monir Moniruzzaman Department of Anthropology and Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, Michigan State University Carolyn Rouse Department of Anthropology, Princeton University Lesley A. Sharp Department of Anthropology, Barnard College, and Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Glenn Davis Stone Department of Anthropology, Washington University Ida Susser Department of Anthropology, Hunter College, and Graduate Center, City University of New York David Vine Department of Anthropology, American University Michael J. Watts Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley This page intentionally left blank Bioinsecurity and Vulnerability Edited by Nancy N. Chen and Lesley A. Sharp School for Advanced Research Press Santa Fe School for Advanced Research Press Post Office Box 2188 Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504-2188 www.sarpress.org Managing Editor: Lisa Pacheco Editorial Assistant: Ellen Goldberg Designer and Production Manager: Cynthia Dyer Manuscript Editor: Merryl Sloane Proofreader: Kate Whelan Indexer: Margaret Moore Booker © 2014 by the School for Advanced Research. All rights reserved. International Standard Book Number 978-1-938645-43-3 First edition 2014. Cover illustration: Living conditions in Okrika, a restive town in the Niger Delta, are at constant risk from oil leaks and oil fires due to the pipelines that run through the community. Children playing on the pipes seen here on July 16, 2004. © Ed Kashi/VII Photo. Used with permission. The School for Advanced Research (SAR) promotes the furthering of scholarship on—and public understanding of—human culture, behavior, and evolution. SAR Press publishes cutting-edge scholarly and general-interest books that encourage critical thinking and present new perspectives on topics of interest to all humans. Contributions by authors reflect their own opinions and viewpoints and do not necessarily express the opinions of SAR Press. Contents List of Figures ix Introduction: Bioinsecurity and Human Vulnerability xi Lesley A. Sharp and Nancy N. Chen Part I. Framing Biosecurity: Global Dangers 1 1. Preempting Biosecurity: Threats, Fantasies, Futures 5 Joseph Masco 2. When a Country Becomes a Military Base: Blowback and Bioinsecurity in Honduras, the World’s Most Dangerous Place 25 David Vine 3. Perils before Swine: Bioinsecurity and Scientific Longing in Experimental Xenotransplantation Research 45 Lesley A. Sharp Part II. Critical Resources: Securing Survival 65 4. Biosecurity in the Age of Genetic Engineering 71 Glenn Davis Stone 5. Between Abundance and Insecurity: Securing Food and Medicine in an Age of Chinese Biotechnology 87 Nancy N. Chen 6. Global Water Security and the Demonization of Qāt: The New Water Governmentality and Developing Countries like Yemen 103 Steven C. Caton 7. Don’t Let the Lion Tell the Giraffe’s Story: Law, Violence, and Ontological Insecurities in Ghana 121 Carolyn Rouse vii Contents Part III. Vulnerability and Resiliency: The “Bio” of Insecurity 143 8. Resilience as a Way of Life: Biopolitical Security, Catastrophism, and the Food–Climate Change Question 145 Michael J. Watts 9. Bioinsecurity, Gender, and HIV/AIDS in South Africa 173 Ida Susser 10. Domestic Organ Trafficking: Between Biosecurity and Bioviolence 195 Monir Moniruzzaman References 217 Index 265 viii Figures I.1 US biodefense research map 1 I.2 US military bases around the globe 2 I.3 H1N1 chart 3 II.1 Genetically modified cotton in India 65 II.2 Cafeteria in urban China 66 II.3 Emergency food and supplies raffle, Hawai‘i 67 II.4 Qāt plants, Yemen 68 II.5 Man with machete wound, Oshiyie, Ghana 69 III.1 Oil fire in Nigeria 143 III.2 Scar on kidney seller, Bangladesh 144 10.1 Advertisement from Bangladesh requesting a kidney for a resident in Italy 201 10.2 Advertisement (Bangladesh) requesting a kidney for a resident in Germany 201 ix This page intentionally left blank Introduction Bioinsecurity and Human Vulnerability Lesley A. Sharp and Nancy N. Chen The new millennium is already rife with rapid-fire “high alert” responses, an increasing trend that is especially pronounced in the United States (though most certainly felt elsewhere, too), 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. Nevertheless, one need only consider a cursory list of other calamities—some of which are decades old—to real- ize the propensity by the late twentieth century for localized dangers to go global. The AIDS pandemic, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, mad cow disease, avian and swine flus, the tsunami of 2004, and the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear crises—all instigated security measures on a grand scale before and after 2001. Beneath the aegis of a new world order of disaster awareness, human safety is conceived of as tenuous at best. Today, “biosecurity” has ballooned into an everyday and increasingly mundane aspect of human experience, serving as a catchall for the detec- tion, surveillance, containment, and deflection of everything from epidem- ics and natural disasters to resource scarcities and political insurgencies, enabling newly conceived mandates in nation-states to police citizens, migrants, and refugees; to reconfigure urban zones, rural landscapes, and border zones; and to regulate precious—albeit basic—goods and services, such as food, water, land, medicines, and biofuels. The bundling together of security measures, their associated infrastructure, and their modes of xi Lesley A. Sharp and Nancy N. Chen governance, alongside response times, underscores a new urgency of pre- paredness; a growing global ethos ever alert to unforeseen danger; and actions that favor risk assessment, imagined worst-case scenarios, and care- fully orchestrated, preemptive interventions. Biosecurity is thus envisioned and increasingly managed on a grand scale. Global initiatives—frequently involving such behemoths as the Department of Homeland Security, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United Nations, and the World Health Organization—all rely on the long arm of bureaucracies empowered not only to determine the scale of imminent danger but also to calculate the values assigned to populations deemed to be at greatest risk or harm. Resources (assessed as valuable, scarce, abundant, or expendable) invariably play into this cal- culus of life. Biosecurity measures necessitate predictability, model mak- ing, preemptiveness, and flexibility, in which anticipated danger, inter- and intranational responsibilities, and global threats are elaborately inter- twined. Even the term itself demands flexibility: today, “biosecurity” can be employed as a noun, an adjective, and a verb (“biosecuritize”). Such porousness, or the ability to encompass new contexts, dangers, and scenarios, renders the concept of biosecurity extraordinarily difficult to define, although the category has a complex yet still traceable history. Moreover, the vagueness of its definition facilitates its proliferation: in the United States especially, one seems to know inherently that new dangers threatening the safety of human populations all too naturally belong under the aegis of biosecurity. Whereas in the pre-9/11 era, epidemics required generally short-lived coordination efforts of local or sometimes national public health personnel for control and containment, post-9/11 responses embody heightened threat and emergency (symbolically embedded in 9-1-1 itself). Epidemic dangers are no longer merely about pathogens or carelessness, but deliberate intent. Policing national borders and surveil- lance are part and parcel of control measures. Such concerns are hardly confined to the United States. For instance, during avian flu epidemics, watchers both inside and outside China carefully tracked the circulation of H5N1 and other infectious agents across provincial and national bor- ders, and several European nations have taken drastic measures to contain zoonotic epidemics through massive culls of livestock that are important sources of food throughout the region. The rhetoric of globalization and the porosity of boundaries of bodies, of nations, and of communications media (Appadurai 2001; Martin 1994) insist not only that surveillance measures track diseases but also that such technologies remain in place long after epidemics or other dangers have subsided, have been contained, or have been squelched. xii Introduction In this volume, we understand biosecurity to be an already formulated convention that links national identity with the securitization of daily gov- ernance. Lakoff and Collier (2008:12) point out that “new assemblages of organizations, techniques, and forms of expertise” continue to reconfig- ure biosecurity as part of living with risk in daily life. Beyond public health concerns, Lakoff (2010b) thoughtfully addresses how disasters also lead to national and state formations in order to mitigate risk. Our collective intent here, however, is to write against