Abstract

How can birds take part in the surveillance of animal diseases under contemporary biosecurity practices? Combining Claude Lévi-Strauss’s analyses of bird sociality and mad cow disease, this article looks at the multiple ways of releasing birds in Hong Kong. It suggests the possibility of an animist perspective on birds in the neoliberal governmentality of epidemics.

Keywords

avian influenza; sentinel; surveillance; governmentality; ontologies; Hong Kong