Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Simulating Terror: A Study of Bioterrorism Preparedness Scenarios as Staged by Scientists, Citizens, and the Security State"

作为21世纪新兴的价值数十亿美元的生物安全产业的一部分，国家层面的演习（NLE）计划使用大规模模拟来评估人们如何应对生物恐怖袭击。通过研究科学家、政策制定者、应急人员和当地居民在NLE场景中的工作，本研究分析了生物安全实践如何赋予生物恐怖主义威胁韧性并重塑美国社区。这篇论文由科学，技术和社会计划资助，研究了现代生物恐怖危机的产生，询问生物恐怖主义如何成为一种可信的风险，以及生物安全实践对公民生活的影响。为了探索科学知识是如何被政治国家创造和实施的，研究者对2009年NLE事件进行了多地点研究。人种学访谈调查了不同的参与者如何计划“事件”，而与政府官员的讨论揭示了这些情景如何为生物安全政策和实践提供信息。批判性观察和公民访谈考虑是什么赋予这些情景可信度，以及它们在多大程度上代表了公众想象中的生物恐怖主义事件。本研究还分析了准备演习和民防的历史，询问了排练和模拟仪式在安全状态下的作用。尽管新的基因组生物学和反恐战争似乎是分开出现的，但这些运动是深深融合在一起的，提出了关于生物学在9/11后世界中的作用的问题。为了解决国家如何让公民参与国家生物安全项目的关键问题，研究人员通过空间和身份的日常制造来研究将科学与政治联系起来的实践。在生物安全涉及在机场储存疫苗和扫描液体的时代，保护国家机构的目标涉及到每个人的生活。通过展示生物安全仪式如何产生生物恐怖危机，这项研究影响了公众设想不同可能性、构建替代生物和不那么可怕的未来的能力。

As part of a multibillion dollar biosecurity industry emerging in the 21st century, the National Level Exercise (NLE) program uses large-scale simulations to assess how people might respond to a bioterrorist attack. By examining the work of scientists, policymakers, emergency responders, and local residents in staging NLE scenarios, this research analyzes how biosecurity practices give tenacity to bioterrorism threats and reshape American communities. This dissertation funded by the Science, Technology & Society Program examines the production of a modern bioterror crisis, asking how bioterrorism has become a credible risk and what outcomes biosecurity practices have in the lives of citizens. To explore how science knowledge is created and implemented by the political state, the researcher conducts a multi-sited study of the 2009 NLE events. Ethnographic interviews investigate how various actors plan the "event," while discussions with government officials reveal how these scenarios inform biosecurity policy and practice. Critical observation and citizen interviews consider what gives these scenarios credibility and to what extent they stand in for bioterrorist events in the public imagination. This research also analyzes the history of preparedness drills and civil defense, asking how rituals of rehearsal and simulation function within the security state.Although the new genomic biology and War on Terror seem to emerge separately, these movements are deeply infused, raising questions about the role of biology in a post-9/11 world. To address the critical question of how the state engages its citizens in a national biosecurity project, the researcher examines the practices that bind science to politics through the everyday making of spaces and identities. In a time when biosecurity involves stockpiling vaccines and scanning liquids at airports, the goal of protecting the national body touches everyone's life. By showing how biosecurity rituals produce the bioterror crisis, this research impacts the public's ability to conceive of different possibilities, building alternative biologies and less fearful futures.