Smallpox vaccination and the limits of governing through contagion in the Straits Settlements, 1868–1926

Vaccination involves the encounter of nonhuman biological matter and human bodies, recalibrating our susceptibility to illness and death. This boundary-crossing act has been caught in conflicting webs of moral significance, including the normalizing frameworks of public health governance and its corresponding forms of resistance. Such tensions and dynamics were a feature of smallpox vaccination - the first modern, systematic state-driven project to build population immunity. Focusing on smallpox vaccination in the British-ruled Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, and Malacca) between 1868 and 1926, we examine the recurrent features of contentions over vaccination from the tentative beginnings of the 1868 Vaccination Ordinance to the systematic extension of vaccination in the 20th century. Engaging science and technology studies of nonhuman agency and social theories on security, we argue that such contentions demonstrate the limits of a power formation we call governing through contagion (GTC). GTC centralizes law and other technologies to normalize public health measures that combat contagious diseases, while dysconnecting populations by its strategies of control. Our history of smallpox vaccination reveals: (i) GTC relies on the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman actors in protecting populations against viral threats; law is essential but does not necessarily drive vaccination or other strategies of control and (ii) resistance to GTC, in which law plays an integral role, reinforces inequalities and differentiated treatment, what we term endemic inter/dysconnectedness.     

Tort Reform and Physician Sanctioning

This article examines the relationship between changes in tort rules and the sanctioning of physicians by state medical boards. It compares the sanctioning rates for doctors in states that have passed tort reforms with the rates in states that have not made legislative changes. It concludes that alterations to the joint liability rule may have increased sanctioning, while the addition of pre–trial screening panels and regulation of attorney fees may have limited the number of physicians who receive punishment.     

Simone signoret (1921–1985)—The body political

In this article I examine the multifaceted nature of the French actress Simone Signoret, an international star whose film career spanned 40 years (1945–1985). This study investigates the different ways in which her performances and her body-as-performance can be read. It also takes on board the complex intertextuality of this star, who was not just a textual embodiment of the political and historical times in which she lived, but also a woman who was before her times, and as such, was extremely modern. The article argues that for this reason she was a star who disturbed and that her performances, throughout her long career, challenged the perceived notions of femininity and the place of women in society. As such, Signoret offered a new set of possibilities for women to engage with in terms of their identity within the social order of things, possibilities that suggested that identities, including sexual identity and agency, need not be fixed, but are constantly able to be negotiated and rethought.