Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Emergencies in the time of COVID-19: An Introduction to Global Politosomatics

The book reviews the political significance of COVID-19 in the context of earlier pandemic encounters and scares, arguing that contagious diseases are fundamentally politosomatic and have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas. It will be of key interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations, and general readers interested in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Format: Hardback
Length: 276 pages
Publication date: 05 May 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

The impact of COVID-19 on politics, health, domestic order, international health governance actors, and the global circulation-based modus operandi of the world order is explored in this comprehensive book. The author argues that contagious diseases should be recognized as complex, open-ended phenomena with diverse characteristics that extend beyond biology and epidemiology. They are fundamentally politosomatic, as they disrupt, agitate, and trigger large-scale processes due to individual somatic-level anxieties stemming from their sense of immediate danger through the networks of their local and global connectedness. The author further emphasizes that pandemics have somatic effects in political expressions that transform the epidemic into national security dramas that should not be treated as extraneous to the disease itself.

When a severe infectious disease spreads, it is often externalized into a culturally meaningful foreign entity, leading to territorialization, nationalization, ethnicization, and racialization of pandemics. This book is of utmost interest to scholars and students of global health and governance, pandemic security, epidemics, history of medicine, geopolitics, international relations, and general readers who are eager to understand the COVID-19 pandemic and its broader implications.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780367769666