2008 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture—Public Health as Urban Politics, Urban Geography: Venereal Biopower in Seattle, 1943-1983

In this plenary, I call for urban geographers to frame public health as a form of urban politics, theorized as governmentality and biopower. I interpret the politics of venereal disease (VD) in Seattle during the mid-20th century this way, detecting a series of dualities in key dimensions of the governance of VD, thus extending geographers' work on these concepts. There was an epistemic duality between biomedical and social framings of disease, a simultaneous techne between ascending and descending modes of power; a duality between descriptive and predictive visibilities; an identity paradox around which bodies were at risk; and a duality in ethos between conservative and progressive principles. Interpreting the city politics of public health this way foregrounds this local-state function as an important topic for urban political geography and brings a series of literatures together into conversation that have tended to remain distinct.