Much could be discussed about these interesting issues you mention in your reply, but I will pick just one subject: your mentioning of nonlinear dynamics as applied to assemblages. More specifically, I shall issue a word of warning about nonlinear sciences as based on my background in engineering. I would love to hear the kinds of thoughts this provokes. Also, this critique is not specifically aimed at your text, but rather at the style that nonlinear sciences often get used in sociology.

First, to draw on criticism by Nigel Thrift, it is easy to see that the concept of complexity has been made mobile across the globe especially by management consultants. But this universalized business use is in contrast to the non-linear complexity sciences, which are as yet open-ended, uncertain and evolving. I think Thrift is justified in describing the nonlinear complexity sciences as “scientific amalgam”, an “accretion of ideas” and a “rhetorical hybrid”. That the complexity metaphor is so widely appealing is itself important — it can be a sign of new senses of time which are more open to possibility than before. Nevertheless, not all natural scientists think that complexity implies a world which is lacking order or on an “edge of chaos”, as some social scientists have assumed.

I would like to mention a new approach to complex systems called neocybernetics. It claims that cybernetic systems, even when they have emergent behaviors, are still based on higher-order balances. The self-regulation and self-organization of lower level actors results to dynamic structures, but ones that still have a lot of rigour. This idea of a dynamic equilibria can save the natural scientists, but also social scientists, from the difficult world of deep nonlinearity and chaos. What we have instead is trust on linearity and stability on the higher level of an emergent order.

I think the idea of neocybernetics resonates well with theorists that have been referenced by the authors of this blog: Niklas Luhmann (“identity maintaining as reduction of complexity”), Ian Hacking (“styles of reasoning”), ANT (“black boxes”) and very likely also the French theorists you mention. Indeed, your inclusion of previous entities, institutions and figures in your analysis is a strong point in favor of some degree of order at your research sites, not just nonlinearity and chaos. To conclude, I advice caution in approaching natural sciences of these areas.

Carlo, I do not know anything about CDC activities in the region, but there are certainly significant disjunctions between the work of three UN executing agencies–FAO, UNICEF, and WHO—regarding avian influenza. To put it too crudely, UNICEF and WHO regard HPAI-H5N1 as a human pandemic-in-the-making. By the criteria of the “WHO global influenza preparedness plan,” the world is in the middle of a Phase 4 pandemic: small clusters of human transmission with limited localized human-to-human transmission of H5N1. UNICEF is involved because women and children are considered key targets for behavioral interventions to reduce human exposure to the H5N1 virus. Organizations like FAO and OIE (World Organization for Animal Health) have experienced HPAI as an extraordinarily devastating animal disease with drastic implications for lives and livelihoods that depend on livestock as assets or enterprises. FAO and OIE maintain that the best hope for a sustainable reduction in opportunities for human transmission of H5N1 is to control HPAI in poultry. Avian influenza has intensified the need for cooperation between organizations that are not used to sharing turf. Part of my fieldwork consisted of attending formal opportunities for institutional exchange (e.g., interagency coordination meetings) and I spent a lot of time at FAO and UNICEF regional offices in Bangkok, which are next door to one another (but often worlds apart). The short answer is yes, there are significant disjunctions between the two approaches, especially evident when attempts are made to collaborate between agencies and integrate human and animal health concerns.

Carlo, your second observation that recently problematized domains associated with FMD and HPAI-H5N1 are transforming transnational institutional arrangements addresses a key dimension of my project. I would love to hear what shifts you perceive in these institutions in relation to emerging infectious diseases. We should discuss this more in the coming months.

Lyle, we share an interest in how global biosecurity arrangements interface with national regimes of health government. As I indicated in the project description, the situation in the Mekong is somewhat fraught. Because of the hypercomplexity of the region, I am going to approach this question from the “point of view” of Lao PDR and Cambodia. The two countries have very different national and state (institutional) histories, particularly in terms of the political incorporation of ethnic minorities. I think I can show how these divergent histories are also entangled with livestock policies and husbandry practices. On the other hand, both countries share the historical and contemporary burden of being wedged between more wealthy and populous neighbors with long histories of ethnic chauvinism and imperial encroachment. Commercialization of livestock has been an important element in national development strategies for Thailand and Viet Nam, which have significantly more complex and stratified livestock production sectors (with associated biosecurity arrangements) than their poorer neighbors in the region. The conventional “geography of blame” for animal diseases has for years pointed toward rural poor smallholders and free-range livestock (FAO recently called this geography of blame into question). As Carlo suggested, the “newness” of the situation has less to do with underlying phenomena (H5N1 and FMD are assumed to be circulating undetected in the region) than techniques of surveillance, isolation, identification and associated arrangements that make the phenomena visible. Many epidemiologists would regard “outbreaks” of either disease in rural areas of the Lower Mekong as a good thing, indicating the detection of what is already assumed to be there.

There is too much more to say. The bottom line is: Lyle, I would love to get a beer with you.

Antti, thank you for your comments. Your work on systems security and critical infrastructure protection in the electricity industry sounds very interesting. You asked what analytical tools I will use in my project. This is the million dollar question. There are many disciplines and thinkers that have “discovered” the need to include other actors than the conventional subjects of history, humans. Though I wholeheartedly agree with the departure point of most science and technology studies (as Shapin puts it: “the making of scientific knowledge can be sufficiently accounted for by ordinary human cognitive capacities and ordinary forms of social interaction”), I am not sure what STS concepts would be of particular utility for my project. Good work has been done by social scientists who take Latour’s concept of the actor network as a heuristic device or methodological imperative, but I have always found the concept underspecified in terms of orientating inquiry.

I do not think theory per se is needed for my project, though I do think a primary challenge for developing an analytical vocabulary sensitive to events of emergence is to avoid epochal implications. Thinkers like Braudel, Deleuze, and De Landa draw on languages of nonlinear dynamics like chemistry, biology, geology, and ecology in order to clarify contemporary assemblages without making epochal claims about modernity. These authors begin with the recognition that some metaphors are less metaphorical than others. In other words, thoughtful application of metaphors can be used to create “engineering diagrams” of processes, dynamics, and practical activities. Foucault’s individuation of apparatuses of discipline and security are such engineering diagrams. Emergent entities, techniques, institutions, or figures do not instantiate the dawning of a new epoch so much as they join a dynamic ecology of previously sedimented entities, institutions, and figures, creating opportunities for novel interactions and articulations that may be self-catalyzing. Of course, epochal claims are often indicative of a loss of certainty, a searching for moorings and bearings, that itself can be turned into an object of inquiry (problematization). On challenge is to develop conceptual equipment to deal with the question of events and their significance without making epochal implications.

I would love to keep this conversation flourishing so please feel free to respond.

I think your project sounds interesting. I was especially intrigued by how intertwined the pathogens are with animals, people, biological materials, markets, resources, household structures and even democratic potential. The inclusion of animals in your analysis is especially relevant: it seems their domestication has not created just one-sided control of animals by humans, but rather the animals and humans have reciprocally influenced one another.

My first questions concerns the analytic tools you will use for these heterogenous affairs. One obvious candidate would be science and technology studies, although some people have aversions for those. In contrast, methods that focus solely on language (e.g. narrative analysis, critical discourse analysis) can be too one-sided for your case.

My second question is, are you linking your project with the theory of reflexive modernization by Ulrich Beck? There are clear similarities (the same animals that are meant to reduce poverty are now a new-found problem), but also deviations: the FAO seems to rely on quite modern classifications like “the poor” or “gender” to manage risks in contrast to Beck’s arguments on the risk society.

My last question also has to do with the novelty of these disease outbreaks. I agree with Carlo’s comment that one should always be sensitive to history and the new techniques of identification that can amplify problems. But the reliability experts of my own research project almost always think the opposite way: in their mind, specific decisive accidents have changed the way they reason about risks. It would be interesting to hear more why this kind of difference exists, as it is recreated in social theory on risks (genealogical analysis of reasoning vs. Ulrich Beck’s idea of dramatic epochal changes).

In general, I am interested in how global regimes of ‘biosecurity’ interface with national regimes of health government. Your addition of other global governance regimes–i.e. development–seems extremely productive. As Carlo pointed out, it would be interesting to know whether global health protocols established by WHO (e.g. the new International Health Regulations) come into conflict or synergy with the development priorities of FAO and/or sovereignty claims by national governments.

Look forward to talking more. At some point we should get together in the Bay Area…

Your focus on the reworking of relationships is very interesting. I was wondering if you are also looking at how work on avian flu and FMD has transformed the FAO? I think there are fundamental shifts going on in these institutions in relation to the “new” problems, or newly problematized domains they are now addressing with some rigor.

I think your focus on both avian flu and FMD is very intriguing. How two very different pathogens suddenly come together in one particular region for very specific reasons is really fascinating! I would love to hear more about this.

As you know, avian influenza itself is nothing new. There have been major outbreaks in the past (in the US for instance). The argument that the current situation is ‘unprecedented’ needs to be taken with some caution. One has to take into account that new techniques of isolation and identification, better surveillance, and a focus on animals make certain phenomena now visible.

Looking forward to learn more about your work!