S5E1: Biosecurity with Stephen Hinchliffe
Claudia launches season 5 of The Animal Turn with a conversation on biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe, a renowned geographer. They discuss how biosecurity is centered on the idea of keeping life safe and how this often operates through spatial logics of trying to keep threats out. They touch on how animals are often blamed for biosecurity threats, questions about whose lives are kept safe, and the various walling work that is done under the banner of biosecurity.
About Steve Hinchliffe
Steve Hinchliffe is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Exeter, UK and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His books include Pathological Lives (2016, Wiley Blackwell) and Humans, animals and biopolitics: The more than human condition (2016, Routledge). He currently works on a number of interdisciplinary projects on disease, biosecurity and drug resistant infections, focusing on Europe and Asia. He is a member of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at Exeter, and sits on the UK Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Exotic Diseases and on the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Science Advisory Group’s Social Science Expert Group. Find out more about Steve on Exeter’s website.
Featured Readings:
For Space, by Doreen Massey; Walled States, Waning Sovereignty, by Wendy Brown; Cow, a movie directed by Lin Gallagher; Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the nature of feeling good by Jonathan Balcombe; Encounters in Borderlands: Borderlining Animals and Technology at Frankfurt Airportby Susanne Bauer, Nils Güttler, and Martina Schlünder; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality, by Karen Davis.
Turkeys
It this episode's animal highlight, Amanda discusses turkeys touching on some of the beautiful dynamics of their social worlds. Below are some of the materials featured:
More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality by Karen Davis; Biomimetic Virus-Based Colourimetric Sensors by Jin-Woo Oh et al; The Secret Lives of Turkeys by Alan Krakauer; Wild Turkey: Life History by the Cornell Lab; Avian Flu Outbreak Reducing 2022 Turkey Production by the USDA; Mama T, Pete, Everything Turkey, All about Turkeys: Fun Facts by VINE Sanctuary
"Walls are a testament to an ongoing an inevitable failure. They are the last attempt to shore up a failing sovereignty consecrating the very bounded corruption they would contest"
Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty
Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music, Jeremy John for the logo, Christiaan Menz for his editing work, and Amanda Bunten-Walberg for the Animal Highlight