{"title":"Pandemic modelling and model citizens: Governing COVID-19 through predictive models, sovereignty and discipline.","authors":"Tony Sandset, Kaspar Villadsen","doi":"10.1177/00380261221102023","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Pandemic modelling functions as a means of producing evidence of potential events and as an instrument of intervention that Tim Rhodes and colleagues describe as entangling science into social practices, calculations into materializations, abstracts into effects and models into society. This article seeks to show how a model society evinced through mathematical models produces a model not only for society but also for citizens, showing them how to act in a certain <i>model</i> manner that prevents an anticipated pandemic future. To this end, we analyse political speeches by various Norwegian ministers to elucidate how various model-based COVID-19 responses enact a 'model citizen'. Theoretically, we combine Rhodes et al.'s arguments with Foucault's concepts of <i>law</i>, <i>discipline</i> and <i>security</i>, thus showing what a model society might imply for the model citizen. Finally, we conclude that although the model society is largely informed by epidemiological models and liberal biopolitics that typically place responsibility on individual subjects, sovereign state power remains manifestly present in the speeches' rhetoric.</p>","PeriodicalId":48250,"journal":{"name":"Sociological Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/30/e8/10.1177_00380261221102023.PMC10159783.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sociological Review","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221102023","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2022/8/2 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"SOCIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Pandemic modelling functions as a means of producing evidence of potential events and as an instrument of intervention that Tim Rhodes and colleagues describe as entangling science into social practices, calculations into materializations, abstracts into effects and models into society. This article seeks to show how a model society evinced through mathematical models produces a model not only for society but also for citizens, showing them how to act in a certain model manner that prevents an anticipated pandemic future. To this end, we analyse political speeches by various Norwegian ministers to elucidate how various model-based COVID-19 responses enact a 'model citizen'. Theoretically, we combine Rhodes et al.'s arguments with Foucault's concepts of law, discipline and security, thus showing what a model society might imply for the model citizen. Finally, we conclude that although the model society is largely informed by epidemiological models and liberal biopolitics that typically place responsibility on individual subjects, sovereign state power remains manifestly present in the speeches' rhetoric.
期刊介绍:
The Sociological Review has been publishing high quality and innovative articles for over 100 years. During this time we have steadfastly remained a general sociological journal, selecting papers of immediate and lasting significance. Covering all branches of the discipline, including criminology, education, gender, medicine, and organization, our tradition extends to research that is anthropological or philosophical in orientation and analytical or ethnographic in approach. We focus on questions that shape the nature and scope of sociology as well as those that address the changing forms and impact of social relations. In saying this we are not soliciting papers that seek to prescribe methods or dictate perspectives for the discipline. In opening up frontiers and publishing leading-edge research, we see these heterodox issues being settled and unsettled over time by virtue of contributors keeping the debates that occupy sociologists vital and relevant.