As part of a multibillion dollar biosecurity industry emerging in the 21st century, the National Level Exercise (NLE) program uses large-scale simulations to assess how people might respond to a bioterrorist attack. By examining the work of scientists, policymakers, emergency responders, and local residents in staging NLE scenarios, this research analyzes how biosecurity practices give tenacity to bioterrorism threats and reshape American communities. This dissertation funded by the Science, Technology & Society Program examines the production of a modern bioterror crisis, asking how bioterrorism has become a credible risk and what outcomes biosecurity practices have in the lives of citizens.
To explore how science knowledge is created and implemented by the political state, the researcher conducts a multi-sited study of the 2009 NLE events. Ethnographic interviews investigate how various actors plan the "event," while discussions with government officials reveal how these scenarios inform biosecurity policy and practice. Critical observation and citizen interviews consider what gives these scenarios credibility and to what extent they stand in for bioterrorist events in the public imagination. This research also analyzes the history of preparedness drills and civil defense, asking how rituals of rehearsal and simulation function within the security state.
Although the new genomic biology and War on Terror seem to emerge separately, these movements are deeply infused, raising questions about the role of biology in a post-9/11 world. To address the critical question of how the state engages its citizens in a national biosecurity project, the researcher examines the practices that bind science to politics through the everyday making of spaces and identities. In a time when biosecurity involves stockpiling vaccines and scanning liquids at airports, the goal of protecting the national body touches everyone's life. By showing how biosecurity rituals produce the bioterror crisis, this research impacts the public's ability to conceive of different possibilities, building alternative biologies and less fearful futures.
