Social Science Research Council

The SSRC has convened a working group that brings together researchers working on the current conjuncture of health, the life sciences and national security, both in the United States and transnationally. This conjuncture has been shaped by a number of recent events and processes, including:

• an emphasis on "emerging infectious disease" as a national and global security problem, beginning in the 1990s;

• technical developments in the life sciences that have dramatically increased the manipulability of living organisms;

• the global dissemination of knowledge about the capacity to produce dangerous pathogens;

• a growing concern about the dangers of bioterrorism, especially following the attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax letters;

• a series of food safety crises in Europe, including BSE and foot-and-mouth disease; and

• current concerns about the possibility of a pandemic of avian influenza.

These events and processes raise a number of issues for critical social scientific reflection: How is uncertain risk being managed by experts in fields related to biosecurity? How are existing fields such as public health and the life sciences being reinflected by the new concern with biosecurity threats? What vision of collective security informs the practices of actors in these areas?

The working group is involved in close discussions based on empirical research into specific domains of contestation around biosecurity. Topics include: conflicts between public health and national security needs in developing disease surveillance systems; problems in developing vaccination policies for novel biosecurity threats; how to bring together life scientists and security officials in developing regulatory policies for emerging fields of technical development; efforts to reshape agricultural practices in the face of new threats to the food supply. Working Group participants come from anthropology, history, geography, and international affairs, and work on North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.