Encapsulation: Governing actual uncertainty in the coronavirus pandemic.

The coronavirus pandemic has revived scholarly engagement with the concept of biopolitics, with interpretations diagnosing either the widespread adoption of a classic biopolitical regime or the full-blown emergence of totalitarian repression (or both of these simultaneously). Relying on a close analysis of different interventions taken by Israeli authorities in response to the pandemic, this article argues that, rather than classic biopolitical strategies, such governmental interventions are better understood in relation to a problem of actual uncertainty. The case of Israel demonstrates how state apparatuses responded to actual uncertainty with technologies that are linked to different rationalities and how these technologies enabled the creation and management of a new milieu.

Molecular sovereignties: patients, genomes, and the enduring of intellectual property.

Monoclonal antibodies are revolutionizing cancer treatments, but come at an increasingly problematic price for health services worldwide. This leads to pressing demands for access, as in the case of In 2015, patients in the United Kingdom invoked the sovereign rights of the Crown in order to demand access to this expensive yet potentially life-saving medicine that had prior been de-listed due to price. This article interprets this campaign as an act of sovereign reassertion against a fundamental exclusion, which, however, ultimately fails to challenge the concrete mechanism enabling this exclusion-intellectual property (IP).

The Cultivation of Digital Health Citizenship.

Contemporary health policy discourse renders individuals responsible for managing their health by means of digital technology. Seeing the digital as productive of citizenship, rather than facilitative of it, this paper unpacks the contested role of technology in acts of digital health citizenship. Drawing on longitudinal data collected in the English healthcare context, this article shows that digital health citizenship is produced through patients' involvement in the generation of health knowledge, including 'big' health data, digital artefacts, experiential knowledge and service feedback.

'Built for expansion': the 'social life' of the WHO's mental health GAP Intervention Guide.

The focus of this study is the WHO's mhGAP-Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) 2.0 (2016), an evidence-based tool and guideline to help detect, diagnose and manage the most common mental disorders, designed for use by non-specialists globally but particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This research is a starting point in tracing the multiple 'doings' of mhGAP-IG - connecting questions of how it is 'done' and what does it 'do' - to the living histories and wider global mental health assemblages that make the tool possible and shape its global circulation.

Between empowerment and self-discipline: Governing patients' conduct through technological self-care.

Recent health policy renders patients increasingly responsible for managing their health via digital technology such as health apps and online patient platforms. This paper discusses underlying tensions between empowerment and self-discipline embodied in discourses of technological self-care. It presents findings from documentary analysis and interviews with key players in the English digital health context including policy makers, health designers and patient organisations.