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SoSe 22: The international political sociology of the body in health and security politics

Luis Caspar Aue

Comments

International relations scholarship has long transcended its focus on states and organizations and increasingly focuses on the body as an object of global politics. This seminar explores how health and security politics have problematized and targeted bodies as objects of global governance. A vast array of transnational and local actors, from the World Health Organization to local policy watch dogs, seek to shape and influence political engagement with the body as a health and security concern. This seminar offers a critical perspective on such practices through the lens of international political sociology and explores the power dynamics in global body politics. It draws on concrete empirical contributions from within IR and from disciplines such as history, area studies, anthropology, public health, sociology, and political economists. The study of the body in health and security politics brings to the surface how international relations are shaped by global historical forces, such as colonialism, scientific universalism, imperialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and war and foreign policy. close