Epidemic space

Abstract

The aim of this article is to highlight the importance of ‘spatiality’ in understanding the materialization of risk society and cultivation of risk sensibilities. More specifically it provides a cultural analysis of pathogen virulence (as a social phenomenon) by means of tracing and mapping the spatial flows that operate in the uncharted zones between the microphysics of infection and the macrophysics of epidemics. It will be argued that epidemic space consists of three types of forces: the vector, the index and the vortex. It will draw on Latour's Actor Network Theory to argue that epidemic space is geared towards instability when the vortex (of expanding associations and concerns) displaces the index (of finding a single cause).

Notes

 This is derived from the work of Derrida (1992) who in Given Time refers to the German word Gift, meaning both ‘present’ and ‘poison’.

 For example in the expression that AIDS is a punishment by God for the sinful and immoral nature of sexual promiscuity, especially in the context of homosexuality.

 The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford University Press, 1986 edition, p. 152.

 For example, it is a well-known fact that human DNA consists of thousands of traces of retroviral genetic material, which are passed on from generation to generation without causing any obvious harm to individuals (Ryan, 2003). It is quite conceivable that in the long run retroviruses such as HIV will also lose their virulence and enter into a far more stable symbiotic relationship with the human species (which is already the case for HIV in chimpanzees).

 See for example Latour's (1988) account of the way in which in nineteenth-century France, the hygiene movement was able to reconfigure public health management around the paradigm of germ theory.

 See Shope & Evans (1993) for a more overall review of the role of geographic and transport factors in the emergence of new viruses.