ABSTRACT
Neoliberal organizing of health manifests itself in the development and deployment of surveillance, management, and coordination networks that see health primarily in the realm of threats posed by diseases dispersed through global networks, networks of bioterror, emerging infectious diseases, and biowarfare. This chapter focuses on the global discourses of geosecurity, freedom, and economic growth that play pivotal roles in the securitization of disease. In the global networks of power, the military is an integral player in the processes of wealth accumulation, playing an integral role in sustaining vastly unequal spaces of extraction and profit distribution. The chapter explores the ways in which the dominant interpretations and meanings within neoliberal structures foreground the framework of security, connecting disease to security and necessitating security responses to health needs. It discusses the implications of this overarching security framework in approaching health and disease. The organizing framework of risk and crisis communication is seen as laying out communication strategies for handling risks.
