Public Health Spaces and the Fabrication of Identity

Abstract

Following from the work of Mary Douglas on the importance of hygienic rules in separating the spaces of a classification system, this paper reviews the assumptions underlying four regimes of public health over the last two centuries. A number of shifts in the form and object of hygienic rules are identified, moving from the strict `cordon sanitaire' of quarantine regulations to the constantly monitored spaces of the new public health. The changes in hygienic rules are shown to have delineated a series of spaces in which individual identity has been successively located. These historical shifts are discussed in the context of a political geometry through which social reality has been established.