Epidemic Orientalism
SociologyFor many residents of Western nations, COVID-19 was the first time they experienced the effects of an uncontrolled epidemic. This is in part due to a series of little-known regulations that have aimed to protect the global north from epidemic threats for the last two centuries, starting with International Sanitary Conferences in 1851 and culminating in the present with the International Health Regulations, which organize epidemic responses through the World Health Organization. Unlike other equity-focused global health initiatives, their mission—to establish "the maximum protections from infectious disease with the minimum effect on trade and traffic"—has remained the same since their founding. Using this as his starting point, Alexandre White reveals the Western capitalist interests, racism and xenophobia, and political power plays underpinning the regulatory efforts that came out of the project to manage the international spread of infectious disease. He examines how these regulations are formatted; how their framers conceive of epidemic spread; and the types of bodies and spaces it is suggested that these regulations map onto. Proposing a modified reinterpretation of Edward Said's concept of orientalism, White invites us to consider "epidemic orientalism" as a framework within which to explore the imperial and colonial roots of modern epidemic disease control.
"Over the course of his monograph, White successfully illustrates how an epidemic Orientalist worldview ultimately weakens epidemic responses and places the health of people on both sides of an imagined divide at a greater risk.... Historians and medical anthropologists and sociologists looking for a thoughtful synthesis of several intellectual frameworks for understanding medicine and empire will find Epidemic Orientalism a useful text."—Molly Walker, H-Sci-Med-Tech
"Backed by archival, historical, and interview data, White pulls off an intellectual feat that places him next to Edward Said['s Orientalism]....Highly recommended."—T. Niazi, CHOICE
"Alexandre White's brilliant book Epidemic Orientalism provides readers with essential context for understanding how social, political, and economic forces—including racism, xenophobia, and racial and colonial capitalism—animate modern epidemic disease control and pandemic governance. While White's analysis takes readers on a long historical tour through the architecture of international pandemic governance beginning in the nineteenth century, the themes that emerge from these earlier periods will be eerily familiar to contemporary readers grappling with Western governmental and international responses to the COVID-19 pandemic."—Courtney Boen, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
"Epidemic Orientalism stands out as a brilliant and timely intervention to not just ongoing discussions of epidemics, but also to the burgeoning studies of racism, racial capitalism, and (post-)colonialism from a global sociological perspective."—Sahan S. Karatasli, American Journal of Sociology
