2019/01/01 by Lina Pinto García · 1 voice
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Neuroscience · Social Sciences · #Bacillus and Francisella bacterial research #Global Security and Public Health #Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/25729861.2018.1532779
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/19
In November 2016, the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace agreement to end a 52-year war. In the context of the peace deal implementation, I ethnographically traced entanglements of biomedicine, public health and the armed conflict across shifting temporalities and realities of war and peace. Through an exploration of past, present and future (dis)entanglements of war and leishmaniasis – a vector-borne disease known by many in Colombia as “the subversive disease” or the “guerrilla disease” – this article traces a discourse that frames health problems, like leishmaniasis, only as scientific or technological challenges. Drawing on STS critiques of future-oriented timelines in technoscience and the concept of pharmaceuticalization, I argue that the expectations embedded in technoscientific innovation problematically limit the possibilities of disentangling leishmaniasis and war in post-conflict Colombia. In contrast, ethnographically exploring how health policies and biomedicine have nurtured violence and exclusion helps us destabilize the warfare-loaded meaning and experience of leishmaniasis. This approach enables us to move beyond imaginaries of technoscientific peacemaking, which I define as the excessive trust endowed to technoscience to (re)build a peaceful future, especially when we are faced with failures in understanding the involvement of technoscience in the production and perpetuation of violence.