Seminar Description
As indicated by the current international Covid response, international health experts have continuously favored magic bullet policies since the consolidation of the field of international or global health in the late 19th century. These policies promise to provide absolute solutions while singularizing complex problems – often with limited success. Building on current field-theoretical approaches on expertise and authority, Luis analyzes the international sanitary conference of 1892 where experts managed to agree on an international health policy for the very first time. Luis argues that international health experts construct magic bullet policies as they perceive their political field as characterized by liquid authority. Experts designed a magic bullet policy – a disinfecting barrier to stop cholera form entering Europe – because only magic promised to deliver even in a field with fluid and instable authority relations. The international sanitary conference of 1892 established trajectories that sustain current global health experts’ focus on magic bullet policies.
About the speaker
Luis Aue is visiting junior fellow at the CCDP, research fellow at the research unit Global Humanitarian Medicine at WZB Berlin Social Science Center and graduate student in political science at Free University Berlin. His research focuses on global health politics, the political sociology of expertise, and international relations theory.