Re: Quarantine and Immigrant Disease Vectors in the Influenza Pandemic in Winnipeg
This is an excellent read.
It helps that this text is based on my own home town, so that the geographic and ethnic dividing lines are meaningful. Yet it is not necessary to be from Winnipeg to see the dichotomous, or perhaps chaotic, approaches to disease control strategies, immigration policy, and legal prescription. While the author paints the local public health officials of the day as enlightened, ethical people, he also shows how the national approach to the pandemic was fraught with prejudicial, narrow-minded and ineffective theories of immigrants and disease control. The evolution to "more subtle techniques of governance, such as education and statistical surveillance" is shown from the archaic, coercive approach to disease containment.
A very interesting paper, IMO, although I wonder why it comes from a post-doc candidate at the University of London rather than from a Canadian university.
J.
