Description

This talk extends the work of my article Viral Clouds (Cultural Anthropology 2010) that explored in multispecies terms the clusters of biosocialities in play in relation to the mid-2000s H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in Indonesia. Here, I interrogate the experience of the Indonesian H5N1 outbreak for its links to biosecurity. Biosecurity, as an extension of the security state and an overall securitization of the social since 9/11, manifested during the outbreak in two forms: promotion of the technical intervention of on-farm biosecurity, and the geopolitical form of international pandemic preparedness. These forms are linked through fear imaginaries, yet what scared the International and Indonesian communities were often at odds.

Celia Lowe is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the University of Washington. She works in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, in the the field of post-colonial science studies, and her main interest is in the travels of biological and other forms of scientific knowledge between EuroAmerica and Southeast Asia. Her first book, Wild Profusion: Biodiversity Conservation in an Indonesian Archipelago was published with Princeton University Press in 2006. She is currently working on the recent avian influenza outbreak in Indonesia and how new forms of biosecurity and risk were in play in relation to the disease. In addition to this work, she is interested in practices of scholarly collaboration in the social sciences between US-based and Southeast Asian scholars. Lowe has also consulted with the Ford Foundation and the Asian University for Women in this field.