Chad Lavin

The Ideology of the Epidemic

In recent years, epidemiology has made a leap from specialized literature to popular discourse. Thanks in part to Malcolm Gladwells bestselling treatment of “social epidemics,” The Tipping Point, nearly every facet of social and political life—from fashion trends and crime waves to global warming and obesity rates—has been described as an epidemic. This paper explores the rise of an “epidemiological imaginary” in which the language of epidemiology proves increasingly persuasive as a way to understand social and political life. This paper explains this imaginary as a reaction to widespread destabilizations of social space, and examines the implicit and explicit political consequences of this way of seeing the world. Ultimately, we argue that the metaphorics of infection resonates with the experience of globalization, but that its political effects depend on its ability to intermix with more concrete political ideologies.

The Buoyancy of Failure Battling Nature in New Orleans

New Orleans and the Mississippi River are often described as a battleground in the war between man and nature. The authors argue that crisis displacement strategies disincline reflection on how this characterization contributes to catastrophic events. The authors outline three sites of crisis displacement: the Army Corps of Engineers, media coverage, and the philosophy of war of the United States government.

Escaping the Spatial Imaginary, or, Politics as an Occupation

Abstract This article examines the persistence of spatial metaphors in modern political thought, from the “public sphere” that has defined liberal and republican thinking for the past few centuries to the high-profile “occupations” that have animated political action of the past few years. The article argues that these metaphors reflect a “spatial imaginary” that corresponds to an ideal of politics as the forcible control of space, and then explores the possibility of a “temporal imaginary” more compatible with the imagination and aspiration required of progressive politics. The article explores how the dual meaning of the term “occupation” – the filling of space and the filling of time – reflects the dialectic of time and space, and considers what happens when a spatial imaginary overshadows the temporal dimension of politics. Ultimately, the article argues that a spatial imaginary tends to inform an idea of politics as a functional use of force, while a temporal imaginary forwards a greater appreciation for history, civic work, and creativity.

Factory Farms in a Consumer Society

Originally developed to describe the industrialization of American agriculture, the term “factory farm” became an increasingly pervasive metaphor in American culture through the 20th Century. From its origins in triumphal narratives of agricultural engineering, the term has extended beyond critiques of agribusiness in recent decades and found expression in critiques of the white-collar workplace and allegories of consumerism and colonialism. This paper chronicles this shift, and argues that the expansive use of the metaphor corresponds to our transformation from a producer to a consumer society. This shift to a consumer society is similarly expressed in food writing from the 20th Century, as Upton Sinclair’s focus on the industrial slaughterhouse is replaced with Eric Schlosser’s focus on the fast-food franchise. Wide use of the metaphor of a factory farm reveals not only how disciplinary technologies far exceed the confines of specific industrial settings, but also how seemingly unrelated institutions and activities – like working, eating, and political protest – are organized by the same technologies and discourses.