Daily practices of bioterrorism preparedness are producing a security community in which citizens are bound together by common biological risk, access to care during times of crisis, and the ability and authority to provide care in an emergency. Through the study of national-level exercise programmes and city-wide preparedness plans in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this ethnographic research asks how communities are materially and ideologically organized around the idea of mitigating biological risk. The dual acts of planning for bioterrorism and simulating a response prescribe a distinct role for government in caring for a population, and not just during times of crisis. This paper explores the outcomes of publicly rehearsing the care practices of government through bioterror simulation by considering how restructuring health systems around the idea of biopreparedness confounds the specter of war with life-giving acts of health care, offering citizens a way of living within the state of emergency.
The United States government has spent billions of dollars this century to prepare the nation for bioterrorism, despite the extremely rare occurrence of biological attacks in modern American history. Germ Wars argues that bioterrorism has emerged as a prominent fear in the modern age through the production of new forms of microbial nature and changing practices of warfare. Revolutions in biological science have made visible a vast microscopic world in the last century, and in this same era we have watched the rise of a global war on terror. Though these movements appear to emerge separately, this book argues that they are deeply entwined. New scientific knowledge of microbes makes possible new mechanisms of war. The history of the work done to harness and control germs, whether to create weapons or to eliminate disease, is an important site for investigating how biological natures shape modern life. Germ Wars aims to convince students and scholars as well as policymakers and activists that the ways in which bioterrorism has been produced have consequences in how people live in this world of unspecifiable risks.
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