Contagion and Chaos: Disease, Ecology, and National Security in the Era of GlobalizationChoice Outstanding Academic Title, 2009. Historians from Thucydides to William McNeill have pointed to the connections between disease and civil society. Political scientists have investigated the relationship of public health to governance, introducing the concept of health security. In Contagion and Chaos,Andrew Price-Smith offers the most comprehensive examination yet of disease through the lens of national security. Extending the analysis presented in his earlier book The Health of Nations,Price-Smith argues that epidemic disease represents a direct threat to the power of a state, eroding prosperity and destabilizing both its internal politics and its relationships with other states. He contends that the danger of an infectious pathogen to national security depends on lethality, transmissability, fear, and economic damage. Moreover, warfare and ecological change contribute to the spread of disease and act as "disease amplifiers." Price-Smith presents a series of case studies to illustrate his argument: the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19 (about which he advances the controversial claim that the epidemic contributed to the defeat of Germany and Austria); HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa (he contrasts the worst-case scenario of Zimbabwe with the more stable Botswana); bovine spongiform encephalopathy (also known as Mad Cow Disease); and the SARS contagion of 2002-03. Emerging infectious disease continues to present a threat to national and international security, Price-Smith argues, and globalization and ecological change only accelerate the danger. |
Contents
On Health and the Body Politic | 11 |
Epidemic Disease History and the State | 33 |
On Sclerosis in Governance | 57 |
Copyright | |
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Other editions - View all
Contagion and Chaos: Disease, Ecology, and National Security in the Era of ... Andrew T. Price-Smith No preview available - 2008 |
Contagion and Chaos: Disease, Ecology, and National Security in the Era of ... Andrew T. Price-Smith No preview available - 2008 |
Common terms and phrases
argues army associated beef Black Death British BSE crisis capacity cattle cholera cohesion conflict contagion contagionist Crosby death debilitation decline demic destabilization destruction Deudney developing countries disease-induced disruption domain domestic draconian economic Elbe elites emergence empirical endogenous epidemic disease epistemic communities erode Europe European Union evidence exhibit exports fear forces German global governance Hans Zinsser historian historical HIV/AIDS human capital human ecology Ibid impact increasing increasingly induced infected infectious disease institutions legitimacy lethal levels material interests McNeill military morbidity mortality national security negative effects non-linear novel outbreak pandemic influenza pathogen percent plague political scientist population Price-Smith prions productivity profound proliferation prosperity public health Realist region republican result SARS coronavirus SARS epidemic significant smallpox social society sovereign Spanish Flu spread state's surveillance threat throughout Thucydides tion transmission troops tuberculosis typhus undermine United variables vectors violence virus World Yersinia pestis Zimbabwe Zimbabwe's Zimbabwean zoonosis