TY - GEN
T1 - Critical Health Geopolitics
T2 - (Un)healthy spaces of the COVID-19 pandemic
AU - Cole, Jennifer
AU - Ayikoru, Maureen
AU - van de Ven, Cas
AU - Mkrtchyan, Hermine
AU - Dodds, Klaus
PY - 2024/9/5
Y1 - 2024/9/5
N2 - Critical Health Geopolitics (CHG) is an analytical framework that offers opportunities for making sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. It links geopolitical research with health research, and reapplies them to the pandemic and post-pandemic world with an eye to how geopolitical power is exercised. The framework encourages researchers and policy-makers to detect and reflect upon the intersectionality of governance, political ecologies, cultural legacies, social and spatial mobilities, and biopolitics. This paper uses case studies to show how a CHG lens can: investigate the dangers of ignoring geopolitical legacies and histories of structural inequality when planning public health interventions; focus on how decisions made in response to COVID-19 exacerbated political and colonial legacies and structural inequalities; and consider how filtering COVID-19 mitigations and policies through a nationalistic framing impacts on satisfaction (or not) with national and supernational policies. CHG also has the potential to act as a multiplier and amplifier of health surveillance and intrusion, identifying why some individuals, populations and thus the areas in which they live may be more vulnerable to disease, and to resisting the control of disease, than others. Furthermore, it offers the most appropriate lens through which to focus research, drawing component fields together to create stronger and deeper understandings of health (in)justice, pandemic preparedness and global health.
AB - Critical Health Geopolitics (CHG) is an analytical framework that offers opportunities for making sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. It links geopolitical research with health research, and reapplies them to the pandemic and post-pandemic world with an eye to how geopolitical power is exercised. The framework encourages researchers and policy-makers to detect and reflect upon the intersectionality of governance, political ecologies, cultural legacies, social and spatial mobilities, and biopolitics. This paper uses case studies to show how a CHG lens can: investigate the dangers of ignoring geopolitical legacies and histories of structural inequality when planning public health interventions; focus on how decisions made in response to COVID-19 exacerbated political and colonial legacies and structural inequalities; and consider how filtering COVID-19 mitigations and policies through a nationalistic framing impacts on satisfaction (or not) with national and supernational policies. CHG also has the potential to act as a multiplier and amplifier of health surveillance and intrusion, identifying why some individuals, populations and thus the areas in which they live may be more vulnerable to disease, and to resisting the control of disease, than others. Furthermore, it offers the most appropriate lens through which to focus research, drawing component fields together to create stronger and deeper understandings of health (in)justice, pandemic preparedness and global health.
KW - COVID19
KW - Pandemic
KW - Lessons identified
KW - Critical Geopolitics
KW - Unhealthy spaces
M3 - Conference contribution
VL - MOST/PROCEEDINGS/2024/1
SP - 215
EP - 223
BT - Preparing for the next pandemic leveraging social and human sciences for crisis
A2 - Dianteill, Erwan
A2 - Assie-Lumumba, N'Dri Therese
PB - Unesco Digital Library
CY - Paris, France
ER -