SARS and Security: Public Health in the 'New Normal'.

The ‘new normal’ may be defined as: a state of perceived insecurity that has entered the public consciousness after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It is argued in this paper that such a worldview has emerged from a tenuous relation between two competing social forces - a neoliberal inspired movement towards the withdrawal of government from certain sectors (that predated September 11) that is countered by the reimposition of aggressive state power in other sectors. With an instrumental focus on the identification and containment of dangerous individuals through detailed information surveillance techniques and the patrol of national borders, the ideology of the ‘new normal’ has become insidiously hegemonic in its influence on a more pervasive level. In particular, this type of orientation has significant implications for public health, especially during times of social duress such as those experienced during a disease outbreak. This paper uses the case of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto as an empirical referent to reflect upon and discuss the general implications of the ‘new normal’ for the relationship between civil liberties and public health. In particular, we examine how public health measures such as quarantine, surveillance, and hygienic containment converge with conceptions of an expanded view of the border that now includes social control measures over not only the nation state border, but also the borders of the city, the hospital, and the body. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]