The Global Biopolitics of Security: An Anthropological Perspective

近年来，生物安全和生物防御已成为政治紧迫性以及医学和科学挑战的主题。越来越多的专家和决策者正在将注意力转向生物恐怖主义的威胁和新的流行病的幽灵，如疯牛病、SARS和禽流感病毒，这些流行病对全球范围内的生命保护构成了独特的挑战。今天，生物制剂构成对安全和健康的重大挑战。国家和人民生活在全球生物政治时代的门槛上（或者可能已经进入）；也就是说，在这个时代，生物和基本生命过程被用于战略目的，包括破坏性目的。在此背景下，专家们正在努力解决与一系列健康威胁有关的生物安全问题，这些威胁既来自自然产生的病原体，也来自通过人类活动改变的病原体。他们的工作正在定义所谓的全球安全生物政治的一个方面。鉴于当代的发展，有必要也有机会在若干层面上对生物安全领域的发展进行批判性的参与。现有的关于生物安全和生物防御的文献主要是新闻和政策导向的，或者是生物和物理科学方面的技术文献。该项目建议对生物安全的技术、政治和伦理维度进行概念上复杂和实证基础的调查。该方法挑选出具体的倡议和行动者——政策制定者、资助机构、科学家、规划人员、企业家和其他人——以供分析关注，他们正在寻求阐明当今生物安全系统的要素。该项目的目的是了解这些行为者如何努力明确生物安全问题并制定技术对策。该项目包括两个组成部分，它们将同时进行并密切相互作用。首先，利用多地点人种学工具进行深入的实地研究，将在正在定义和开展生物安全工作的专家活动的特定地点进行。其次，这些单独的研究将在一个比较和合作的框架内进行协调，该框架旨在阐述一系列更广泛的概念，并理解这一新兴领域中更广泛的形式组合。目标是迈出第一步，发展一种丰富和多方面的社会科学方法来解决当代生物安全问题。公共卫生的合理性和安全的新形式的结合点提供了一个机会，以发展适合研究安全的全球生物政治的新概念和方法。如果社会科学家希望参与对我们的社会和政治生活至关重要的发展，这种参与是必不可少的。

In recent years, biosecurity and biodefense have emerged as topics of politicalurgency as well as medical and scientific challenges. A broadening range of experts and decision-makers are turning their attention both to the threat of bioterrorism and to the specter of new epidemics, such as BSE, SARS, and avian viruses that pose distinctive challenges for the protection of life on a global scale. Today, biological agents constitutea vital challenge to security and health. Nations and peoples live on the threshold of (or have perhaps already passed over into) an era of global bio-politics; that is, an era in which living beings and fundamental life processes are being deployed for strategic ends, including destructive ones. In this context, experts are grappling with biosecurity in relation to a range of threats to health, both from naturally occurring agents and from those that have been altered through human activities. Their work is defining one aspect of what can be called the global biopolitics of security.Given contemporary developments, there is a need and an opportunity for critical engagement with developments in the domain of biosecurity at a number of levels. The existing literature on biosecurity and biodefense is predominantly journalistic and policy-oriented or it is technical literature in the biological and physical sciences. This project proposes to develop a conceptually sophisticated and empirically grounded inquiry into the technical, political, and ethical dimensions of biosecurity. The approach singles out for analytic attention the specific initiatives and actors -policymakers, funding agencies, scientists, planners, entrepreneurs, and others - that are seeking to articulate the elements of a biosecurity system today. The aim of the project is to understand how these actors are working to specify the problem of biosecurity and to forge a technical response. The project involves two components that will be undertaken simultaneously and in close interaction. First, intensive field research using the tools of multi-sited ethnography will be conducted at specific sites of expert activity in which biosecurity is being defined and worked on. Second, these individual studies will be coordinated in a framework for comparison and collaboration that seeks to elaborate a range of broader concepts and to understand broader combinations of forms in this emerging domain. The objective is to take the first steps in developing a rich and multi-dimensional social scientific approach to contemporary problems of biosecurity. The conjuncture of rationalities of public health and new formations of security presents an opportunity to develop novel concepts and methods that are appropriate to studying the global biopolitics of security. Such engagement is essential if social scientists wish to participate in developments that are of cardinal importance to our social and political life.