Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management
Global anxieties about avian influenza stem from a growing recognition that highly-virulent, highly-mobile disease vectors infiltrate human spaces in ways that are difficult to perceive, and even more difficult to manage. This article analyses a participatory health intervention in Việt Nam to explo...
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ftdoajarticles:oai:doaj.org/article:04d216c209574aa2b0b33b26b23f331e 2023-05-15T15:34:20+02:00 Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management Natalie Porter 2012-11-01T00:00:00Z https://doaj.org/article/04d216c209574aa2b0b33b26b23f331e EN eng Duke University Press http://environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol1/EH1.7.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/2201-1919 2201-1919 https://doaj.org/article/04d216c209574aa2b0b33b26b23f331e Environmental Humanities, Vol 1, Pp 103-121 (2012) Environmental sciences GE1-350 article 2012 ftdoajarticles 2022-12-30T22:52:39Z Global anxieties about avian influenza stem from a growing recognition that highly-virulent, highly-mobile disease vectors infiltrate human spaces in ways that are difficult to perceive, and even more difficult to manage. This article analyses a participatory health intervention in Việt Nam to explore how avian influenza threats challenge long-held understandings of animals’ place in the environment and society. In this intervention, poultry farmers collaborated with health workers to illustrate maps of avian flu risks in their communities. Participant-observation of the risk-mapping exercises shows that health workers treated poultry as commodities, and located these animals in environments that could be transformed and dominated by humans. However, these maps did not sufficiently represent the physical and social landscapes where humans and poultry coexist in Việt Nam. As such, farmers located poultry in environments dominated by risky nonhuman forces such as winds, waterways, and other organisms. I argue that these divergent risk maps demonstrate how ecological factors, interpersonal networks, and global market dynamics combine to engender a variety of interspecies relationships, which in turn shape the location of disease risks in space. I develop the term risky zoographies to signal the emergence of competing descriptions of animals and their habitats in zoonotic disease contexts. This concept suggests that as wild animals, livestock products, and microbial pathogens continue to globalise, place-based health interventions that limit animals to particular locales are proving inadequate. Risky zoographies signal the inextricability of nonhuman animals from human spaces, and reveal interspecies interactions that transect and transcend environments. Article in Journal/Newspaper Avian flu Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
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Directory of Open Access Journals: DOAJ Articles |
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ftdoajarticles |
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English |
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Environmental sciences GE1-350 |
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Environmental sciences GE1-350 Natalie Porter Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
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Environmental sciences GE1-350 |
description |
Global anxieties about avian influenza stem from a growing recognition that highly-virulent, highly-mobile disease vectors infiltrate human spaces in ways that are difficult to perceive, and even more difficult to manage. This article analyses a participatory health intervention in Việt Nam to explore how avian influenza threats challenge long-held understandings of animals’ place in the environment and society. In this intervention, poultry farmers collaborated with health workers to illustrate maps of avian flu risks in their communities. Participant-observation of the risk-mapping exercises shows that health workers treated poultry as commodities, and located these animals in environments that could be transformed and dominated by humans. However, these maps did not sufficiently represent the physical and social landscapes where humans and poultry coexist in Việt Nam. As such, farmers located poultry in environments dominated by risky nonhuman forces such as winds, waterways, and other organisms. I argue that these divergent risk maps demonstrate how ecological factors, interpersonal networks, and global market dynamics combine to engender a variety of interspecies relationships, which in turn shape the location of disease risks in space. I develop the term risky zoographies to signal the emergence of competing descriptions of animals and their habitats in zoonotic disease contexts. This concept suggests that as wild animals, livestock products, and microbial pathogens continue to globalise, place-based health interventions that limit animals to particular locales are proving inadequate. Risky zoographies signal the inextricability of nonhuman animals from human spaces, and reveal interspecies interactions that transect and transcend environments. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Natalie Porter |
author_facet |
Natalie Porter |
author_sort |
Natalie Porter |
title |
Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
title_short |
Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
title_full |
Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
title_fullStr |
Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
title_full_unstemmed |
Risky Zoographies: The Limits of Place in Avian Flu Management |
title_sort |
risky zoographies: the limits of place in avian flu management |
publisher |
Duke University Press |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
https://doaj.org/article/04d216c209574aa2b0b33b26b23f331e |
genre |
Avian flu |
genre_facet |
Avian flu |
op_source |
Environmental Humanities, Vol 1, Pp 103-121 (2012) |
op_relation |
http://environmentalhumanities.org/arch/vol1/EH1.7.pdf https://doaj.org/toc/2201-1919 2201-1919 https://doaj.org/article/04d216c209574aa2b0b33b26b23f331e |
_version_ |
1766364770723692544 |