Cholera in the Time of War--"A Microscopic Insurgent"

This week, we're switching gears again to our final unit on health, medicine, and disease. We will revisit a number of themes that we've discussed throughout the course, namely geographies of exclusion and the production and reproduction of poverty. We'll also continue to look at different ways of understanding, explaining, and representing the world and the interests expressed therein. In short, we'll be looking at the politics of microbes and how their spread and management are not only "natural" but also the result of social and political histories.

The first reading that we're doing on this topic is Jenna Loyd's "A Microscopic Insurgent: Militarization, Health, and Critical Geographies of Violence," which is to be found in your course packets. Loyd is going to take us to Iraq to look at the connection between health (particularly representations of health and disease) and the US military intervention there. Heads up: this is an academic journal article is vastly different in approach and tone to the chapters we've just been reading in Neuwirth. While it is fairly brief, don't be fooled--it's also very dense. You should take your time with this reading and work to really understand it. At the same time, try not to get frustrated at its difficulty. Try to focus on how Loyd makes the claim that "health is entwined with violence."

To provide some background, Loyd (like many of the authors that we've read) is taking issue primarily with the misrepresentation of place and history in the New York Times. In particular she takes aim at the way in which Mark Drapeau presents the history and emergence of a cholera epidemic in Iraq (the article that she is critiquing can be found here). In doing this, Loyd explores the link between humanitarian causes and military violence, arguing that the former are often used to legitimate the latter. We can see Loyd's article as part of an ongoing conversation about "structural violence." This is not a term that we've used in class, although much of what we've discussed to date--the effects of "free trade" and agricultural policy on farmers as well as displacement in urban area--can be considered "structural violence." This term simply refers to the (often unintended and under-examined) effects of economic and governmental policy that do physical and mental harm to certain groups or individuals within a population. Structural violence often produces or intensifies existing social inequalities, placing certain populations at greater risk of disease, premature death, malnutrition, and general insecurity. Loyd makes the argument that the violence of war should not only be measured in its direct costs to life, but also in the forms of structural violence that it creates.

As you read, pay attention to how Loyd frames her argument against Drapeau. Her argument is very similar to that of Professor Lindskoog's in his open letter to David Brooks about Haiti. Where do you see similarities? What evidence does she use to make her claim? What do you think she is suggesting about the US's role in Iraq in relation to histories of Imperialism? And what do you think the implications are for how we think about humanitarian aid?