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From the Globe to the Germ, and Back
DOI link for From the Globe to the Germ, and Back
From the Globe to the Germ, and Back book
From the Globe to the Germ, and Back
DOI link for From the Globe to the Germ, and Back
From the Globe to the Germ, and Back book
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ABSTRACT
The connections between science, technology, and world politics often appear to play out in “big” issues, “large” structures, and the wide spaces of the international. This “big picture” thinking influences many of the challenges international practitioners are faced with, not least the threat of disastrous pandemic catastrophes raised as a real possibility by the likes of SARS, H1N1, or more recently Ebola. Yet the link between IR and technology also unravels in the mundane cosmopolitics where these very threats play out. In the everyday the “international” dimension of global threats like pandemics, and large technological and scientific collaborations designed to confront these, are embodied, performed, and domesticated. As I argue, a cautious approach to the science and technology backbone of IR needs to take these multi-scalar and everyday considerations very seriously. Thinking of “deeper” spatiality of world politics vis-à-vis global health, this chapter illustrates the need to situate science and technology within those visceral flows of our society charting the mundane realities of the urban age, for the kinds of cosmopolitics at the heart of IR scholarship and praxis.