Steve Hinchliffe, University of Exeter
Co-Author of Pathological Lives: Disease, Space, Biopolitics
I have always been struck by and tried to take on board Doreen Massey’s argument that geography is a complex science about complex systems. I am also increasingly concerned about (and no doubt conditioned by) the need for research to be communicated in short, high impact forms (the social media post, the five minute Zoom conference presentation, the media-friendly sound bite, the executive summary that will not test the attention span or patience of a government minister). Given the current logjam of emergencies and crises, all of this research compression may well be appropriate. There is no time for consideration. We need quick solutions, not complexity. So why write, or indeed read, a book? Briefly (!), let me make three arguments about researching complexity, communicating succinctly and the nature of crises that all relate to the need for monographs.
First, complexity. If we take complexity to signal something like the non-coherent interplay of elements that do not form a whole or display coherence or systematic behaviour, then the injunction for research is that it should be open to a world of multiple causes and consequences. In the case of Pathological Lives, we were looking at the making of diseases, and specifically those diseases that crossed from non-human animals to people. The simple answer is of course to focus on the microbes, the pathogens (as their name suggested, they make suffering), and to stop their movements.
But as any epidemiologist would tell you, there is no fire without fuel. Infectious diseases require the right hosts, the right environments for pathogens to be pathogens. In other words, diseases are relational matters – they are born and flourish when the relations are right. Indeed, we wanted to show how simple approaches to controlling pathogens of pandemic potential (PPPs) that only focused on pathogens and their transmission, failed to consider issues of extraction and exploitation that also contributed to what we called a disease situation. The latter involved markets, production systems, movements of stock, acceleration of growth rates, and many other things besides.
To do justice to this multifactorial aspect of disease, to demonstrate its social and economic causes, was a book length project. It drew together research projects, field encounters and experiences in a way that enabled us, eventually, to start to reframe what was meant by pathological. What made us sick wasn’t just the microbes, it was the social and economic processes that made those microbes pathogenic. Pathogenicity, we argued, was a matter for much more than the pathogens.
Second, the need to be succinct. The luxury of writing and reading books should not be surrendered in the name of fast results and maximum impact. While there is a temptation to turn to the endless scrolls of bad news instead of picking up a book, it is also the case that now, more than ever, we need book length treatments and the time to engage with them as a means for informed consideration and judgement. For one thing, writing a book enables rather than detracts from the process of distilling an argument into something that can travel, have effects and make a difference. Books have afterlives, and most of those lives are in the form of a short caption or reference that captures the contribution. So distillation is inevitable, but we should always value the hard work and concentrated research that has enabled that distillation to occur. Books in this sense enable the informed argument and the impactful soundbite. They provide the space to develop those arguments, and are a mark of quality and of the process of distillation.
Finally, emergencies and crises. For some, emergencies and crises are a time for shortcuts, for exceptions or for bypassing due process. But we need to remember that crises are also moments of critical reflection, for judgement, for daring to speak and think something different. The real value of books, and the ability to shape a conversation through a book, is an opportunity to turn crises into critical junctures for thinking and doing things differently.
Since Pathological Lives, we have all learned something about health and socio-environmental crises. Some issues, like the roles of racialised inequalities and the exploitation of people and non-human animals, were well known, but the COVID 19 pandemic has helped to move these arguments into new arenas. Perhaps now, more than ever, pathological lives are becoming a matter of critical reflection and even, dare I hope, some action.
The role of this series, in continuing to foster the process of engaging complexity, making and distilling arguments and enabling critical arguments in the face of crises, remains.