Global Public Health Vigilance is the first sociological book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities imagine and respond to international threats to human health. This book explores a remarkable period of conceptual innovation during which infectious disease, historically the focus of international disease control, was displaced by "international public health emergencies," a concept that brought new responsibilities to public health authorities, helping to shape a new project of global public health security. Drawing on research conducted at the World Health Organization, this book analyzes the formation of a new social apparatus, global public health vigilance, for detecting, responding to and containing international public health emergencies. Between 1995 and 2005 a new form of global health surveillance was invented, international communicable disease control was securitized, and international health law was fundamentally revised. This timely volume raises critical questions about the institutional effects of the concept of emerging infectious diseases, the role of the news media in global health surveillance, the impact of changes in international health law on public health reasoning and practice, and the reconstitution of the World Health Organization as a power beyond national sovereignty and global governance. It initiates a new research agenda for social science research on public health.

Global Public Health Vigilance is the first sociological book to investigate recent changes in how global public health authorities imagine and respond to international threats to human health. This book explores a remarkable period of conceptual innovation during which infectious disease, historically the focus of international disease control, was displaced by "international public health emergencies," a concept that brought new responsibilities to public health authorities, helping to shape a new project of global public health security. Drawing on research conducted at the World Health Organization, this book analyzes the formation of a new social apparatus, global public health vigilance, for detecting, responding to and containing international public health emergencies. Between 1995 and 2005 a new form of global health surveillance was invented, international communicable disease control was securitized, and international health law was fundamentally revised. This timely volume raises critical questions about the institutional effects of the concept of emerging infectious diseases, the role of the news media in global health surveillance, the impact of changes in international health law on public health reasoning and practice, and the reconstitution of the World Health Organization as a power beyond national sovereignty and global governance. It initiates a new research agenda for social science research on public health.

Traditionally, Euroamerican cultures have considered that human status was conferred at the conclusion to childbirth. However, in contemporary Euroamerican biomedicine, law and politics, the living subject is often claimed to pre-exist birth. In this fascinating book Lorna Weir argues that the displacement of birth as the threshold of the living subject began in the 1950s with the novel concept of 'perinatal mortality' referring to death of either the foetus or the newborn just prior to, during or after birth. Weir's book gives a new feminist approach to pregnancy in advanced modernity focusing on the governance of population. She traces the introduction of the perinatal threshold into child welfare and tort law through expert testimony on foetal risk, sketching the clash at law between the birth and perinatal thresholds of the living subject. Her book makes original empirical and theoretical contributions to the history of the present (Foucauldian research), feminism, and social studies of risk, and she conceptualizes a new historical focus for the history of the present: the threshold of the living subject. Calling attention to the significance of population politics, especially the reduction of infant mortality, for the unsettling of the birth threshold, this book argues that risk techniques are heterogeneous, contested with expertise, and plural in their political effects. Interview research with midwives shows their critical relation to using risk assessment in clinical practice. An original and accessible study, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers across many disciplines.

Traditionally, Euroamerican cultures have considered that human status was conferred at the conclusion to childbirth. However, in contemporary Euroamerican biomedicine, law and politics, the living subject is often claimed to pre-exist birth. In this fascinating book Lorna Weir argues that the displacement of birth as the threshold of the living subject began in the 1950s with the novel concept of 'perinatal mortality' referring to death of either the foetus or the newborn just prior to, during or after birth. Weir's book gives a new feminist approach to pregnancy in advanced modernity focusing on the governance of population. She traces the introduction of the perinatal threshold into child welfare and tort law through expert testimony on foetal risk, sketching the clash at law between the birth and perinatal thresholds of the living subject. Her book makes original empirical and theoretical contributions to the history of the present (Foucauldian research), feminism, and social studies of risk, and she conceptualizes a new historical focus for the history of the present: the threshold of the living subject. Calling attention to the significance of population politics, especially the reduction of infant mortality, for the unsettling of the birth threshold, this book argues that risk techniques are heterogeneous, contested with expertise, and plural in their political effects. Interview research with midwives shows their critical relation to using risk assessment in clinical practice. An original and accessible study, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers across many disciplines.