Where species meet and mingle: endemic human-virus relations, embodied communication and more-than-human agency at the Common Cold Unit 1946–90

Abstract

Epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and H5N1 provide compelling arguments for restricting meetings and minglings between humans and viruses. Geographers have begun to address these spaces of bio(in)security, highlighting how epidemics actively reconfigure social and spatial relations as humans seek to respond to viral threats. This approach offers an important route for geographers to intervene in contemporary biopolitical debate, but such analyses are also defined through the epidemic spaces they study. In contrast, this paper explores the more endemic spaces of human-virus relations and focuses on ontological politics: the materialities of human and viral bodies, the socio-material worlds they inhabit and the ways in which they respond to each other’s presence and agency. Taking inspiration from more-than-human and animal geographies, and the work of Donna Haraway, this paper examines the UK’s Common Cold Research Unit (CCU) where humans and viruses were encouraged to meet and mingle so scientists could study the common cold. Two key arguments are made. First, that focusing on how scientists sought to accommodate viruses at the CCU draws attention to the risks and benefits for both humans and viruses of reconfiguring relations between them. Second, echoing recent moves in health geography towards embodied understandings of health and disease, a case for recognizing how human-virus relations are cultured through embodied communication. I conclude that rather than seeing viruses as an external threat to be eradicated, we might recognize how we have learned and are learning to live endemically with our viral companions.