Locating disease: on the coexistence of diverse concepts of territory and the spread of disease

When governments have to decide what to do about the threat of infection or contagion, their political concerns and, in particular, their understanding of the relationship between territory and people, are bound to inform their decisions. Drawing on accounts of how different political regimes responded to outbreaks of infectious disease in the Mediterranean region in the past, this chapter focuses on how different regimes understand the spread of the disease: its movement across space.

The rapid spread of COVID-19 during 2020 and the highly diverse political responses to it have demonstrated the importance of this point. Close the borders or not? Quarantine the population or not? The issue here is how people understand, organize and structure spatial relations and separations, as well as how they understand the disease in itself. Given that the spread of a disease involves movement across space, including the crossing of political borders, the way that location is understood and organized is important to how diverse peoples and regimes respond to the spread of disease. The question the chapter deals with is how diseases are located – in the Mediterranean region, in this case.