Keck Frédéric
Laboratory for Social Anthropology, LAS, 52 rue Cardinal Lemoine, Paris, 75005 France.
Biosocieties. 2015;10(2):162-176. doi: 10.1057/biosoc.2015.6. Epub 2015 Jun 11.
This article compares the treatment of living beings (unvaccinated chickens and infected cells) considered as sentinel devices in a farm and in a lab in Hong Kong. Sentinel devices are defined as living beings posted on a boundary from which they send signals of invisible threats. The ethnography looks at how they transform differences between ordinary lives and lives exposed, between good death and bad death, through the practices of those who feed them. In farms and labs exposed to Avian Influenza viruses, the logic of biosecurity intersects with a logic of care, blurring the distinction between self and other, friend and enemy through aesthetic judgments concerning what is a 'good death'. Metabolism and immunity are redefined when sentinels are fed to produce clear signals of the mutations of viruses.
本文比较了在香港一个农场和一个实验室中被视为哨兵装置的生物（未接种疫苗的鸡和受感染的细胞）的处理情况。哨兵装置被定义为放置在边界上的生物，它们从那里发出无形威胁的信号。人种志研究了它们如何通过喂养它们的人的实践，改变普通生活与暴露生活之间、善终与恶终之间的差异。在暴露于禽流感病毒的农场和实验室中，生物安全逻辑与关怀逻辑相互交织，通过关于什么是“善终”的审美判断，模糊了自我与他者、朋友与敌人之间的区别。当喂养哨兵以产生病毒突变的明确信号时，新陈代谢和免疫力被重新定义。
