A science that knows no country: Pandemic preparedness, global risk, sovereign science. Issue 2 (December 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hurlbut, J Benjamin
• Is Part Of: Big data & society. Volume 4:Issue 2(2017)
• Publication Date: 2017-12
• Subjects: Pandemic preparedness -- global governance -- biosecurity -- constitutionalism -- science and law -- influenza; Big data -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Methodology -- Periodicals; Data mining -- Periodicals; 300.28557
• DOI: 10.1177/2053951717742417
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2053-9517

Abstract

This paper examines political norms and relationships associated with governance of pandemic risk. Through a pair of linked controversies over scientific access to H5N1 flu virus and genomic data, it examining the duties, obligations, and allocations of authority articulated around the imperative for globally free-flowing information and around the corollary imperative for a science that is set free to produce such information. It argues that scientific regimes are laying claim to a kind of sovereignty, particularly in moments where scientific experts call into question the legitimacy of claims grounded in national sovereignty, by positioning the norms of scientific practice, including a commitment to unfettered access to scientific information and to the authority of science to declare what needs to be known, as essential to global governance. Scientific authority occupies a constitutional position insofar as it figures centrally in the repertoire of imaginaries that shape how a global community is imagined: what binds that community together and what shared political commitments, norms, and subjection to delegated authority are seen as necessary for it to be rightly governed.