[Air-L] COVID-19 Seminar #5: Dr Frederick Keck, CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS

[Thao Phan]

*COVID-19 Seminar #5: Dr Frederick Keck, CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS*
https://frederickkeck-seminar.eventbrite.com.au

Please join us for seminar #5 in the COVID-19 seminar series, co-hosted by
the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship & Globalisation (ADI)
<https://www.deakin.edu.au/adi> and the Science and Society Network (SSN)
<https://scienceandsocietynetwork.deakin.edu.au/>.

*Date/time:*
Tuesday 26th May, 2:30pm - 4pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time, GMT+10)

*Title:*
Flying Reservoirs: Virus hunters, birdwatchers and bat carers in Chinese
sentinel posts

*Abstract:*
I will present the Covid-19 crisis through the conceptual grid I have built
in my book, Avian Reservoirs, which just came out with Duke UP. Starting
from speculations on the bat origins of the new coronavirus, I will ask
questions about sentinels, simulations and stockpiling as techniques of
preparedness for pandemics. I will then present the genealogy of pandemic
preparedness in Hong Kong to ask the question : why were Hong Kong « virus
hunters » more prepared « ontologically » for this pandemic ? How do
techniques of anticipation of future epidemics depend on ontological
relations between humans and non-human beings ? This will lead me to
question Foucault’s definition of sovereign power as « make die and let
live » through an ethnographic analysis of culling and releasing animals.
The question I will ask then is : how are relations between humans and
birds in Hong Kong forged through pandemic preparedness transformed when
pandemic preparedness involves relations between humans and bats ?

*About the speaker:*
Frédéric Keck is the head of the Laboratory for Social Anthropology
(CNRS-Collège de France-EHESS) funded by Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1960. After
studying philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and
anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, he has been
researching the history of social anthropology and contemporary
biopolitical questions raised by avian influenza. He was the head of the
research department of the musée du quai Branly between 2014 and 2018.


*Watch the seminar:*
Seminar will be available to stream on YouTube live. Access using the live
link: https://youtu.be/xs9kAOe957Y

Date/time: Tuesday 26th May, 2:30pm - 4pm (Australian Eastern Standard
Time, GMT+10)

To send questions/participate in the YouTube Live chat, you'll need to sign-in
using a YouTube account
<https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-comment-on-youtube?r=AU&IR=T>.

If you have any questions, please send to ssn-info at deakin.edu.au
<ssn-info at deakin.edu.au>

The talk will also be recorded and available on the SSN Youtube Channel
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVYFQV_UFX9CLreqpNzanVA>.

Did you miss our last seminar? Watch it here!
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtH1AbnJ7AFApbhh29fL5kqjNFdD_0eID>