Safecraft: Race, Space, and the Building of American Biosecurity Against Emerging Diseases / Chuan Hao Alex Chen.

Format:

Book

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

Chen, Chuan Hao Alex, author.

Contributor:

University of Pennsylvania. Anthropology, degree granting institution.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cultural anthropology.

Public health.

Epidemiology.

Anthropology--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Anthropology.

Local Subjects:

Cultural anthropology.

Public health.

Epidemiology.

Anthropology--Penn dissertations.

Penn dissertations--Anthropology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (415 pages)

Distribution:

Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2023

Contained In:

Dissertations Abstracts International 85-08B.

Place of Publication:

[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania] : University of Pennsylvania, 2022.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The "twin pandemics" of 2020, COVID-19 and systemic racism, merged the concerns of health equity and biosecurity against emerging diseases in American public health. Controversies over personal protective equipment and indoor air ventilation drew concerns over how to design safe spaces and practices against the novel coronavirus, while racial disparities in COVID mortality and public health enforcement raised questions of who is being prioritized by such efforts to build safe spaces from the pandemic. Contextualizing the American COVID-19 response in the history of racism and racialized epidemics, this dissertation asks: How does the ongoing building of American national biosecurity and safety against emerging diseases intervene in the social geography of race? How are different conceptions of safety formed and materialized in biosafety practices, built environment features, and biomedical infrastructures? How are these processes of building safe spaces influenced by existing racial hierarchies? Drawing upon 20 months of fieldwork with laboratory designers with biosafety expertise, oral history archives, news media, design and public health guidelines, and governmental reports, this dissertation traces the complex and oft-contradictory ways in which COVID-19 protection has been sought. Efforts to maintain disease barriers, dilute virus-laden air, and mobilize mass testing and vaccination through careful delineation of space have more often preserved rather than challenged existing hierarchies of class, gender, and race in a process that I call "safecraft" - the tentative and relational movements toward familiar terrains that inform folk understandings of "safety" and their endeavors to restore bodily, social, and spatial order that have been disrupted by COVID-19. Safecraft highlights the diversity in how safety is perceived and felt, underscoring the detailed processes of making safety through physical reordering and movement. Where safety is usually taken to be apolitical, safecraft references existing power distribution and dynamics in its enactment. This, along with the durability of physical space, creates an inertia that preserves existing inequities, potentiating disavowal and violence in the building of safe spaces. Whereas the comfort of the familiar perpetuates existing inequities, the dissertation suggests that equitable biosafety and safe spaces cannot be built without reconfiguring existing tolerances to risk and discomfort.

Notes:

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-08, Section: B.

Advisors: Petryna, Adriana; Committee members: Thomas, Deborah; McKay, Ramah; Carruthers, Andrew.

Department: Anthropology.

Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania 2023.

Local Notes:

School code: 0175

ISBN:

9798381471540

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.