Alan Ingram

... S. Legg, Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (Oxford: Blackwell 2007); T ... First, as highlighted by a governmentality approach, global security discourses seem to be ... Neoliberal Globalization and the War on Drugs: Transnationalizing Illiberal Governance in ...

ABSTRACT This article reflects on the increasing use of the term geopolitics in discussions of disease. It notes that although the term geopolitics has been used increasingly often, its precise meaning has not received sustained attention. Neither has it been conceptualized in relation to the extensive literature in critical geopolitics. To lay the groundwork for a more considered understanding of geopolitics in relation to disease, the article elaborates upon the senses in which geopolitics has been invoked in recent literature and links them with themes in critical geopolitics. It identifies three intersecting themes, in connection with which issues of geopolitics have been raised: the spatialization of governance, biopolitics and transnational political economies. In discussing these themes, the article identifies a number of questions and avenues for further research. Overall, it argues that there is considerable scope to investigate further the ways in which disease becomes geopolitical. In conclusion, the article raises a series of questions that may serve to connect research on the geopolitics of disease with debates taking place in and around critical geopolitics and geography more generally.

The rise of the term global health reflects a concern with rethinking the meaning of health in the context of globalization. As a field of practice, however, global health renders problems, populations, and spaces visible and amenable to intervention in differentiated ways. Whereas some problems are considered to be global, others are not. Some are considered to be matters of global security, whereas others lack this designation and remain in the realm of health or development. Attention is drawn to individual global health problems, even as their broader structural dimensions are often obscured. We suggest that a critical geographical approach to global health therefore entails reflexivity about the processes by which problems are constituted and addressed as issues of global health and identify three analytical approaches that offer complementary insights into them: governmentality, risk, and assemblage. We conclude by outlining some further issues for critically reflexive geographies of global health. El surgimiento de la expresión salud global refleja una preocupación por repensar el significado de la salud en el contexto de la globalización. Como campo de práctica, sin embargo, la salud global rinde problemas, poblaciones y espacios visibles y susceptibles de intervención de maneras diferentes. Si bien algunos problemas se aprecian como globales, otros no. Algunos son considerados materia de seguridad global, en tanto otros carecen de esta designación y permanecen dentro del mundo de la salud o del desarrollo. Se llama la atención sobre problemas globales de salud individuales, incluso si sus dimensiones estructurales más amplias a menudo son oscuras. Sugerimos que un enfoque geográfico crítico de la salud global requiere consecuentemente una reflexión acerca de los procesos con los que se constituyen los problemas y son abocados como asuntos de salud global, e identificamos tres enfoques analíticos que ofrecen comprensión complementaria para los mismos: gobernabilidad, riesgo y ensamblaje. Concluimos esquematizando algunas cuestiones adicionales para geografías críticamente reflexivas de la salud global.

A growing critical literature examines the rise of biosecurity. HIV/AIDS has been mentioned in this literature as a biosecurity issue, but despite its importance as a major global health problem, the ways in which HIV/AIDS might be considered a matter of biosecurity have not been explored in depth. This article addresses this issue, particularly in relation to the international response to HIV/AIDS, through the conceptual prism of governmentality and in relation to concerns about globalisation and security. Following a discussion of the relevance of governmentality to research on the intersections between globalisation and security, the article considers biosecurity and the international response to HIV/AIDS in terms of modes of problematisation and institutionalisation. In terms of problematisation, it argues that while some biosecurity issues and HIV/AIDS have been addressed as emergencies, the characteristics of anticipation, preparedness, emergence and pre-emption, which are central to the dominant formation of biosecurity, are less relevant to HIV/AIDS. As the article shows, the two fields have also been institutionalised in rather distinct ways. It therefore cautions against regarding the international response to HIV/AIDS as a biosecurity intervention. In conclusion, the article identifies three broad avenues for further research: unpacking the politics of global health and security during recession; engaging with theoretical debates around governmentality; and engaging with problems of space.

... of Africa, the connection between colonial power dynamics and Western representations of Africa is durable (eg Mbembe, 2001; Mudimbe, 1988; Toubia ... to note that the ways in which the question of HIV/AIDS became bound up with specific forms of transnational mobility in ...

This article describes the emergence of a new geopolitics of disease following the end of the Cold War and offers a framework for thinking about it. Three main questions are asked. First, why is disease now a geopolitical issue? Second, how has this new geopolitics emerged? And third, what are the implications of the emergence of disease as a geopolitical issue for the meaning and practice of global health? It is argued that disease is now seen as a geopolitical issue in terms of four main dimensions: destabilisation, sovereignty, the instrumentalisation of health, and geopolitical economy. Second, this new geopolitics has emerged in the context of larger debates about globalisation, development and security, and has emanated primarily from Northern institutions. Third, drawing on critical approaches to security, it is suggested that while the securitisation of health offers certain benefits, it also carries risks. The article identifies a number of critical tensions in the new geopolitics of disease as a way of negotiating these risks and anchoring the concept of global health security in a larger vision of health in an era of globalisation.

Global health problems are often framed as common challenges confronting humanity, and while political commitment and resources have recently increased, a number of faultlines run through efforts to mount collective responses. Although the United States has staked its claim to leadership in the fight against disease, its actions diverge in several key respects from much of the international community, undermining

On 2 May 2011, a US Navy Seal unit conducted a raid in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad, in which Osama bin Laden and four other people were killed. Hailed as a great success by the US government, the operation raised many difficult questions about the politics, ethics ...