What is more dangerous – the disease, the vaccine or the government? Using governmentality theory to understand vaccine hesitancy among Israeli citizens in times of corona

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccine presented a rare opportunity to study risk perceptions that underline vaccine hesitancy and refusal (VHR). Drawing on Foucault’s governmentality theory, we aimed at studying the risk perceptions that underlie VHR in Israel by ascertaining why people decided not to be vaccinated against Covid-19. At the beginning of 2021, we conducted 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with Israelis who decided not to be vaccinated against Covid-19. The interviews reveal a pervasive resistance to biopower. The interviewees believe that the Israeli government is driven by political interests and mistrust its collaboration with the big pharma companies that are suspected of furthering their own financial interests. Their mistrust manifests in allegations that the government conceals and manipulates data, and makes decisions in a non-transparent manner. The interviewees resist the Israeli government’s dangerous coercion and mistrust of its risk discourse. They express inverse risk considerations, perceiving the vaccine to be potentially dangerous, and the disease as less dangerous. Covid-19 VHR in Israel in particular, can be seen as resistance to perceived biopower, biopolitics, and bioeconomy, alongside a deconstruction of experts’ calculated risk that leads one back into uncertainty. In general, examining risk perceptions associated with vaccines through the lens of governmentality theory can help to better understand VHR, as well as other reactions to situations of risk, and to illustrate how people’s bodies become an arena for exercising power and negotiating risks.