The Vital Systems Security collaboration examines how, today, security is being constituted as an object of knowledge, intervention, and political reflection. It proposes that the security of vital systems such as energy, transportation, communication and health is one norm in relationship to which security is being reproblematized. A central goal of the collaboration is to examine these issues through collective, conceptually driven inquiry that addresses rapidly developing contemporary problems.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl noted yesterday that the public may misunderstand the word “pandemic.” The term refers to where an illness spreads, not its severity.
That, of course, is true. But have they not themselves used the category in a very different way?
Having just read Malinowski’s ‘Coral Gardens and their Magic’, in which he outlines a theory of translation and language that focuses on understanding a term in 1) the context of its use and 2) the context of its culture, your insight on the word ‘pandemic’ strikes a chord. How is the ‘use’ of the term different from the formal definitions given it? What effects (we don’t need to go toward ‘function’ per se) does the use of the term have? How is the term used differently among different communities of experts?
To do its intended political work, the term has always referred to a severe and disruptive pathological event. What we are now seeing is a very different type of event. So the politics which was built into the term by experts has now become an obstacle.