Their mobilization of the constant threat of disease is mobilized to continuously securitize risky populations which prevents actually preparing for an outbreak

Our analysis sheds light on how pandemic influenza has been conceived of as a political problem by the WHO and, by extension, one that requires a particular form of intervention. The texts analyzed here construct specific versions of reality that are implicated in both the problematization of, and the solution to, a future pandemic. This in-depth empirical work contributes to contemporary understandings of biopolitical regulation by exposing the organizing logic underpinning preparedness, and by considering the possible implications of this imagining for intervention into a future global pandemic. The construction of the natural features of the influenza virus in terms of its potential to transform into the next pandemic virus and spread across multiple boundaries, necessitates the integration of preparedness activities (characterized by flexibility and contingency) into everyday practice. Thus, the potentiality and inherent uncertainty of the virus becomes at once the target of intervention and representative of the underlying reasoning of response mechanisms.

Pandemic preparedness discourse operates as a technology of (in)security that renders the uncertainty of pandemic emergence governable. The threat of pandemic influenza to the health of the global population is conceived of, and responded to, through specification of the very features of the virus and its potential to disrupt society in numerous ways. The construction of the virus, both in terms of its pandemic potentiality and its capacity to transgress corporeal and territorial boundaries, is key in this regard; these features reveal the interconnectedness of territories, and how such interconnectedness constitute zones of vulnerability to pandemic emergence, and thus threats to global health.

This study contributes to recent critical social science work analyzing the framing of pandemic influenza and corresponding preparedness and response mechanisms in terms of: securitization (Kamradt-Scott and McInnes, 2012); the extension of public health intelligence activities beyond traditional means (French and Mykhalovskiy, 2013); understandings of ‘vulnerability’ by the public and within national and sub-national planning (Stephenson et al, 2014); and the governing of uncertainty through potential or future biosecurity threats (Samimian-Darash, 2013; Thomas, 2014). Our interpretation also resonates with other work that critically examines technologies of security, which are presented as a panacea in environments increasingly marked by insecurity (Aas et al, 2009). As Zedner (2009) points out, technologies of security frequently result in greater insecurity for many individuals or social groups (for example, checking of ID cards of immigrants and refugees). Similarly, we have demonstrated the mutually constitutive way in which pandemic preparedness, as a technology of (in)security, discursively constructs new vulnerabilities, increasing both the demand for security solutions and insecurity of those deemed unable to protect themselves against emerging threats (for example, through the purchase of pharmaceuticals or the stockpiling of non-pharmaceutical resources).

Furthermore, we have analyzed the ways in which the molecular level of the ‘viral’ is discursively implicated in the organizing logic of pandemic preparedness at the scale of the global population, which enables the implementation of interventions at the national and transnational level (Raman and Tutton, 2010). The ‘natural’ potentiality of the virus implicates all viral strains in a future pandemic and constructs multiple possibilities for the source and origin of emergence of the next pandemic virus. The discursive linking of pandemic and non-pandemic viral activity poses a problem for risk governance; the uncertainty that is constituted by these blurred distinctions creates a need for the continuous differentiation between these possibilities. In this way, pandemic planning constitutes society as ‘insecure’ because of the ongoing possibility that ‘normal’ viruses will transform and spread across bodies and territories, a threat that preparedness simultaneously aims to preempt in the objective of global security. Thus, these viral constructions also serve as a key technique in enabling the forms and logic of preemption that characterize preparedness, and necessitate the continuity that drives ongoing global pandemic influenza governance – if every influenza virus has the potential to transform and become the pandemic virus, then preemptive intervention is required to respond to this risk.

The integration of pandemic into everyday processes is co-constituted with the viral object. The viral potentiality and ubiquity of risk, which occurs in the interconnections or boundaries that constitute the social world, and in the viral circulations that we know as ‘natural’, also expand the possibilities for the temporality and territory of intervention. Risk is rendered governable through the ongoing engagement with the possibility of the exceptional pandemic, rather than through the calculation of probabilities. This integration is most apparent in the 2005 restructuring of pandemic phases to include the ‘normal’ state of, animal, infection (not necessarily accompanied by human infection). The logic of preparedness, while still oriented toward a future event, is no longer focused on the prevention of specific or isolated disease outbreaks or events by precluding certain risks that may lead to these undesirable outcomes (for example, pandemic), but is rather focused on securing uncertainty through the regulation and control of emergent risk via ongoing engagement and adaptation (Dillon, 2007; Lakoff, 2007).

In pandemic planning, biopolitical regulation targets not simply circulation characterizing the (human) population, but also as it pertains to the ‘natural’ tendency of the influenza virus to circulate and expand. Of particular concern is the regulation of those ‘between’ spaces that present a potential conduit for transmission of the virus between bodies and species, as well as across territories. While between spaces and the social relations that are implicated in their creation are constituted as sites of potential risk because of possible viral transgression, and consequently as possible targets of surveillance and control, the final objective of this form of regulation is not immobilization, or the restriction of circulation.

Instead, national bodies and other actors are called upon to account for shared or proximate borders that are constituted as sites of vulnerability in terms of the possible spread of disease across such boundaries. Response to viral threat is framed in terms of the mapping of vulnerabilities in a ‘society’ that is imagined largely along organizational lines, for example, in terms of the interconnectedness of businesses or governmental ministries. Thus, much of the reference to the restriction of movement involves the recourse to discretion on a case-by-case basis, and at various levels of governance (for example, national, local and individual). This control is a crucial feature of global biopolitical regulation, which involves the calculation of ‘the extent to which life must be incited to be free, or subjected to scrutiny and discipline’ (Kiersey, 2009, p. 41).

The construction of viral potentiality and expansion across social boundaries is complicated by the parallel functioning of epidemic as operating ‘for’ or ‘against’ the people, a point that recognizes the processes of circulation as intrinsic to the population (Thacker, 2009). Preemptive responses to this threat allow for the ongoing distinction between desirable and undesirable forms of circulation.

The problematization of the pandemic influenza virus according to its potential to transgress boundaries and expand across states and populations opens up multiple possibilities for intervention. For example, the positioning of risk in relation to animals encourages the surveillance of animal populations that often culminates in culling, regardless of whether all of the animals are infected. While such interventions are positioned as justifiable in order to manage viral circulation and potential disease outbreaks, they may have significant economic consequences for those involved in the farming and trade of livestock. Moreover, intensive surveillance may also result in the stigmatization of human bodies closely connected to infected animals. Finally, the positioning of particular nations and pan-national regions (for example, nations that are linked through proximity, shared borders or trade partnerships) as inadequate in the tracking and containment of the natural mutability of the virus justifies certain exclusionary practices. For instance, this construction legitimizes the closing of borders to protect against products and beings from these ‘uncontained’ regions, enacted as a last resort. It also justifies global surveillance and other containment measures within national borders that aim to ensure the ‘global good’ while condemning those nations unable or unwilling to undertake such preparedness activities.

At the global level, this mode of governance diverges from the disciplinary mechanisms that attempt to bring individuals in-line with the norm, through various forms of expert knowledge (Lemke, 2011). Instead, uncertainty is taken as the given in terms of the emergence of pandemic viral strains, and rather than prevent emergence, security mechanisms attempt to regulate this uncertain, yet imminent, event. This securitization is to be achieved through a recourse to freedom (Lentzos and Rose, 2009), which allows for the circulation of viral strains (among other entities) and responds primarily through the adaptation of existing infrastructure and networks (for example, vaccine production networks) in order to mitigate the negative effects of the pandemic. In line with Cooper’s (2006) observation, discourse concerning the potential threat posed by the virus entrenches wealthy nations in the very process of emergence to the point of actualizing it through the production of a global stockpile of anti-virals and other materials, with significant consequences for economic profit from an unrealized event.3

Central to Foucauldian interpretations of security apparatuses is their position as ‘counterparts to liberal freedom and [as] the condition for its existence. Security mechanisms are meant to secure and protect the permanently endangered naturalness of the population, as well as its own forms of free and spontaneous self-regulation’ (Lemke, 2011, p. 47). Technologies of security are aimed at protecting the whole from the internal threats that exist within the social body, which is always at risk. Our analysis illuminates how molecular constructions operate in service of global security and freedom, in addition to the disciplinary mechanisms discussed earlier in this article. The ubiquitous risk of a pandemic virus that could disrupt the ‘naturalness’ of circulation of living and non-living things (for example, humans, goods, information) necessitates an ongoing response to all possibilities of viral activity in order to mitigate or minimize disruptions within networks of circulation (for example, by targeting/accounting for advisories around social gatherings, work/school attendance and travel). This is substantiated by predictions that illness because of a global pandemic could result in GDP losses between 0.5 (£8.4 billion) and 4.3 per cent (£72.3 billion) in the UK alone (Smith et al, 2009). These estimates would increase when accounting for changes in routine such as widespread school closures or prophylactic absenteeism (Smith et al, 2009; Smith et al, 2011). Thus, the threat to the imagined ‘whole-of-society’ is in the undesirable disruption to the circuitous arrangement of global capitalism and the interruption of economic and social functioning. The possible closure of borders, restriction of movement through quarantine and other measures, or the cancellation of social events, in response to a transgressive virus threaten the neoliberal conception of individual rights and freedoms that is so highly valued in the West.