PUBLIC-HEALTH SPACES AND THE FABRICATION OF IDENTITY

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.