Dis-ease Surveillance: How Might Surveillance Studies Address COVID-19?

Abstract

We are currently in the midst of a global pandemic with the spread of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). While we do not know how this situation will unfold or resolve, we do have insight into how it fits within existing patterns and relations, particularly those pertaining to sociocultural constructions of (in)security, vulnerability, and risk. We can see evidence of surveillance dynamics at play with how bodies and pathogens are being measured, tracked, predicted, and regulated. We can grasp how threat is being racialized, how and why institutions are flailing, and how social media might be fueling social divisions. There is, in other words, a lot that our scholarly community could add to the conversation. In this rapid-response editorial, we provide an introduction to the framing devices of disease surveillance and discuss how a surveillance studies orientation could help us think critically about the present crisis and its possible aftermath.