In a recent article ‘Smallpox Vaccination and the Limits of Governing through Contagion in the Straits Settlements, 1868-1926’ published in Law & Policy, my co-author Jack Jin Gary Lee and I examine the social regulation of contagious diseases and its impact through the case of smallpox vaccination, the first modern, systematic, state-driven attempt to build population immunity. Focusing on the Straits Settlements (Singapore, Penang, and Malacca) between 1868 and 1926, we analyze the contestations over vaccination – by tracing the unsteady beginnings of the 1868 Vaccination Ordinance to the programmatic expansion of vaccination in the early 20th century. We frame our analysis with a power formation that we call ‘governing through contagion’ or GTC, a theoretical concept that we developed by intersecting science and technology studies with social theories on security.
My co-author and I first constructed the concept of GTC for a larger, ongoing project to examine (i) how the centralization of law and other technologies shape strategies of control to combat contagious diseases; (ii) how such strategies of control moralize, even normalize, public health measures; and (iii) how interactions with these strategies of control can produce inter/dysconnectedness, a term we coined to refer to inequitable social divisions that appear in GTC that often exacerbate existing differences. We implemented the project in two prongs: we convened a workshop inviting other scholars to engage with the concept of GTC; selected nine papers from scholars from law, socio-legal studies, history, sociology, anthropology, geography, politics, medicine and public health, who conduct research on Asia, North America, Australia, Europe and the Middle East; and edited the volume Contagion, Technology, and Law at the Limits, which is forthcoming with Hart Publishing. At the same time, my co-author and I launched a historical ethnography of colonial and contemporary Singapore, drawing from archival sources, interviews, and other qualitative data to trace and draw connections between macro-historical contexts and structures, on the one hand, and the micro-sociolegal frame of action and practices involved in the processes of GTC, on the other.
The article is a slice of the historical ethnography. It develops the themes of GTC along two strands. GTC suggests that the role of law in public health regulation is powerful, capable of aiding or hindering the fight against contagion. Our analysis of smallpox vaccination reveals how this power is moderated: (i) because strategies of control, such as vaccination, rely on the interconnectedness of human and nonhuman actors, law is essential but not the only determinant of a strategy’s success or failure, and its power is tempered by interactions with the unpredictable behaviour of viruses, challenges of medical technology, and human resistance; (ii) resistance to strategies of control reinforces inequalities and differentiated treatment, resulting in endemic inter/dysconnectedness.
To bring out these two strands of GTC, we show how officials initially resorted to ‘native prejudice’ to explain their difficulty with implementing vaccination and dismissed colonial subjects’ concerns with officials’ poor medical qualifications, the injuries caused by unsuccessful vaccinations, and the ineffectiveness of the vaccine virus[A1] . Colonial officials eventually tackled some of these issues, including critically switching from humanized lymph to lymph extracted from calves. Nevertheless, we demonstrate how colonial officials still encountered resistance by their subjects, who acted based on their religious beliefs, local medicinal practices, or suspicion of the colonial government. We also highlight how these officials responded by punishing the resistant and chastising them with the same language of class, race, or religious difference found in British colonial governance. Thus, by the early 20th century, the back-and-forth of moralization-normalization and resistance in the British colonial project of smallpox vaccination had generated endemic inter/dysconnectedness of racialized differences that had always troubled its colonial rule.
We conclude the article by making linkages between the Straits Settlements case of smallpox vaccination and the post-colonial Singapore case of COVID-19 vaccination. Even though the two cases are situated in different political contexts, involve different viruses, and implicate different forms of medicine, law, and telecommunication, we argue that they offer parallel lessons along the central themes of GTC.
Keywords: Law & Society, Vaccination, Public Health, Smallpox, COVID
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Dr. Lynette J. Chua is Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, with a joint appointment at Yale-NUS as Head of Studies for the Double-Degree Programme in Law and Liberal Arts.
Email: lynettechua@nus.edu.sg