In this episode we talk with Jane Brophy about why the assumption that people are stupid does not adequately explain complex social phenomena. We also discuss Jane's work on stem cell tourism in China, the allure of cruise ships post-COVID, and the new theatrics of hygiene.
Photo by Chris Nguyen on Unsplash
Audio clip Bad Cruise Ship Passengers
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
In this episode we talk with Jane Brophy about why the assumption that people are stupid does not adequately explain complex social phenomena. We also discuss Jane's work on stem cell tourism in China, the allure of cruise ships post-COVID, and the new theatrics of hygiene.
Photo by Chris Nguyen on Unsplash
Audio clip Bad Cruise Ship Passengers
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
Christopher Mayes: Welcome to Undisciplinary, a podcast where we're talking across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health. Today we are recording today on the unceded lands of the Wathaurong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation in Geelong and Melbourne.
My name is Chris Mayes, and I'm joined by my co host, Courtney Hempton.
What are we talking about today, Courtney, and who are we talking with?
Courtney Hempton: Today we are joined by Jane Brophy. Jane is an interdisciplinary social science researcher. She is co-author of the 2017 book, Stem Cell Tourism and the Political Economy of Hope, which draws on her PhD research into the phenomenon of stem cell tourism from a sociological perspective. Under the shadow of COVID-19 in Melbourne, Jane is now studying public health. So Jane, welcome to Undisciplinary
Jane Brophy: Hi. Thanks, Courtney. Hi, Chris.
Christopher Mayes: Hello. It's great to have you. And yeah, really looking forward to talking about a range of areas where you've worked on, medical sociology, stem cell tourism and some of your newer thinking around public health and ah, what’s the…
Jane Brophy: I feel so, um you know this is a bit of a ‘this is your life’ moment. Going back to kind of my earlier research, that is seeming more relevant these days under COVID.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, well it's sort of, it's really shaking things up in different ways. Maybe just as a sort of start to talk about some of that earlier work and, and, and medical sociology in general, and how you have come, or how you came into that and, and the kinds of areas that you were interested in and exploring
Jane Brophy: Um, yeah, it's so in preparing for our chat today I delved back into some of my earlier research. So I actually started out my academic life studying linguistics and China, China studies. So my first thesis that I wrote was a narrative analysis of public Health propaganda campaigns in China. And so that's, just digging that out, and finding some really relevant stuff I wrote about propaganda coverage of SARS in 2002 in 2003, so really relevant in thinking through Nnarratives around public health campaigns in Australia now, and how public health interventions are framed.
So just a nice anecdote that's come back to me, is that that thesis I titled, epidemic brings positive change, because that was a title of an article about SARS. And the excerpt that I started that chapter with was, I wrote: “In May and June, sightings of vipers reported in four residential communities across Beijing cause panic among local residents. The police had to be called in to capture the reptiles. It transpired that on certain experts saying snakes carry the SARS virus, restaurants serving game had set free snakes earmarked for their dinners, and that had slithered uptown.”
Christopher Mayes: Wow. So the, wait. What was it, there was the propaganda that snakes carried SARS. So then the restaurants, got rid of their snakes?
Jane Brophy: Well, this is actually, um, so it's a story that appears in the magazine China Today, and it’s an English language magazine that's produced as kind of a mouth piece of party propaganda for, I guess, like sympathizers overseas, who want to find out what's happening in, you know, in great communist motherland. And so it started, you know, decades ago. But, so this is a story about, a good news story, about changing, changing dining practices as a result of this public health measure, or this directive, but, you know, reading between the lines, it's obviously clearly a story about unintended consequences as well. So I think that's really on a lot of people's minds at the moment, in terms of the public health response in Melbourne of, you know, one, one directive may have all sorts of kind of interesting flow on effects. And I think, you know, we'll only, you know, time will tell, what that, what they are.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah. Yeah, well, I think. I've been eating a lot more toasted cheese sandwiches as a result of working from home, which is perhaps a trivial flow on effect, although I'm sure some people in public health would be concerned around my need to have adequate exercise to work off these toasted cheese sandwiches. Yeah. So yeah, there are lots of things that people are obviously talking about in, in response to these measures and knock on effects.
Jane Brophy: Yeah, so it's been it's been interesting in, you know, returning to kind of formally studying public health and being able to get back to some of these questions around narratives and discourse and language in health interventions. And surprisingly, I was terrified but biostatistics is actually turning out to be my, my, or an unexpected joy, in the sense that there's actually a lot of kind of philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics involved in understanding what goes in behind all these models and numbers and
Christopher Mayes: So you’re enjoying biostats?
Jane Brophy: Yeah, yeah. So my, my original mentor who supervise that thesis around narratives in print media, he directed me to Ian Hacking’s work, so the Canadian philosopher who, he wrote a book on, an introduction to probability and inductive logic. And there’s a lovely little question around ranking probability. Which goes: Pia is 31 years old, single outspoken and smart. She was a philosophy major. When a student, she was an ardent supporter of Native American rights and she picketed a department store that had no facilities for nursing mothers. Rank the following statements in order of probability from one, most probable to six, least probable. The options are: Pia is an active feminist, Pia is a bank teller, Pia works in a small bookstore, Pia is a bank teller and an active feminist, Pia is a bank teller and an active feminist who takes the yoga classes. So he then goes on to say that a couple of psychologists, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, sorry if I butchered those pronunciations, say that people, they did an empirical study and people tend to choose the last option of being, working in a bookstore and active feminist and yoga classes. And he goes on to explain why that's not the case. The following a subheading is simply, are people stupid? Which, I think that's a question that's been thrown around a lot this year, too, in terms of like the panic buying of toilet paper and things like that and, you know, for me, the question ‘’are people stupid sends me down an absolute rabbit hole because you know that's, for me, that's not a satisfactory answer, or a satisfactory way of understanding social phenomena. So yeah, I guess, getting back into kind of some of the more philosophical stuff related to biostatistics has been really enjoyable.
Christopher Mayes: And I mean that just that idea of, you know, are people stupid, whether it's in relation to their panic buying, or these sorts of situations now, but also in relation to some of your work on stem cell tourism, it seems that when news reports come out of people going to another country to have some speculative procedure done and things all go drastically wrong, there can be a similar response of, you know, how stupid could you be to do something like that. But from your work that I've seen, and the role of hope and expectation, there are a whole range of different reasons why people engage in, what in hindsight might seem like a very stupid or reckless thing to do. I'd be interested to hear a bit about that.
Jane Brophy: Yes, so, um, my work on stem cell tourism that, that really rose out of an interdisciplinary ARC project that I had the opportunity to join, and have my PhD research funded as a member of that team. I came to that after a masters in China studies. So I had, which was based on qualitative research in the Chinese healthcare system. So at the time when this project was being put together, China was one of the most common destinations that people were traveling to so my, my pitch for being involved in that project was that I could go and do field work and get inside some of these clinics and, and you know ask some, you know, more complex questions of the people who are selling these treatments so, I was, so as, my supervisors who were kind of the lead researchers were, one was the sociologist and one was a scientist ,and in her role in Stem Cells Australia, she was getting a lot of inquiries from people who had read about these treatments online overseas and contacting her, she had a very public facing role, saying, you know, what's your opinion of this treatment, should I go, I have this condition, how do I make sense of it.
Christopher Mayes: What are some of the examples of the treatments that people were commonly going for?
Jane Brophy: Um, so, Cerebral Palsy was one it's, it's difficult to quantify in that sense, because you know, there's really no way of counting the numbers. At the time, at the beginning of the project, Megan Munsie, the biologist, she estimated about 400 people a year got, traveling overseas, by, simply based on the number of patient inquiries that she was getting. There was a group quite active around multiple sclerosis that had kind of certain links with a clinic in Russia. My empirical focus of my research was China, because that was sort of, you know, is leveraging my, my background in qualitative research in China. In terms of what treatments were on offer, it was, if you were to look up a clinic website, you know there's kind of an A to Z list, with a bit of a sense of, you know, ‘we've got the tonic for what ails ya’. So, and when we spoke to people there, one example that comes to mind was a woman who was taking her child for treatment, her young child for treatment, and even she was a bit dubious. She said, well, we got this diagnosis, but there was more of a sense that, the, there was a lot of clinical uncertainty around that diagnosis, but getting that diagnosis in the Australian system meant that she would gain access to you know relevant services provided through, you know pathways in the Australian healthcare system. So she was pursuing stem cell treatment on the basis of that diagnosis, but it was sort of kind of clear that, you know she, she sent at the test results across to the clinic, but, you know, she said yes, when they were treating her on the basis of that, that she had this condition, but there was just so much uncertainty around, well what is it exactly that they were targeting with the purported treatments, where there’s already yet so much underlying certainty about the clinical condition.
Courtney Hempton: I was interested, even in the term stem cell tourism and whether that, the idea of kind of being a tourist in, in that has kind of a pejorative sense? I'm just wondering whether people who are pursuing these treatments kind of would see themselves as tourists, or of that's a term that they would use for kind of seeking intervention overseas, or if that's I guess a label that's kind of being applied to this practice, and with this kind of pejorative kind of meaning?
Jane Brophy: Yeah, I think that's a really important point to make.I suppose, by virtue of having worked in the space for a little while I've probably slipped back into the kind of parlance. There was a lot of debate, though in our research about what kind of terminology we should be using. So, you know, in our writing we, we talked about people who travel or stem cell travellers. In terms of, you know, it sort of been framed in response to the field of medical tourism studies. But it has a kind of an uneasy, sits in that cannon in a bit of an uneasy space, for the reasons that you're suggesting. That said, for some people that I spoke to, so I spoke to an older guy who, he had travelled to a clinic in China and came back. He didn't perceive that any kind of improvement to his condition, but he, you know, he talked about, having the opportunity to do something that he could do, so he had one month stay in the clinic, which he loved because there was a really social space and he was able to travel to somewhere that it was managed in a really, like a highly sort of in a way that attended to his health care needs. And he said after, after his one month stint they even arranged for him to get an extension on his visa, so he could go to the Great Wall, and do you things. So I think, yeah, in academic discourse, I think, yeah, we, we do need to be attendant to language that we're using. But in reality, like even just the concept of stem cell tourism, it's a really heterogeneous experience. So for some people it's a highly medicalised experience, for others who perhaps have a bit more mobility and capacity to engage in touristic activities, that may not necessarily be ruled out as part of the experience
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, that's a really. I mean, I think I remember, Jane, maybe the first time I met you was at like a TASA conference, The Australian Sociology Association conference, and I think you may be presenting on some of this stuff and the debates around tourism, because I think particularly say with the West-China relationship there is that sort of, Orientalism and, you know, Doctor Fu Manchu, and all of this sort of stuff that can creep into, particularly media portrayals of people going over to Southeast Asia or wherever, but then there are places, obviously, depending on the procedures where there will be, yeah, like a whole package. So if it's, where you stay in a hotel and you can have your sort of cheaper cosmetic surgeries or those sorts of things. I mean, I know we're talking about stem cell here, and they will a tourist package set up to go along with the medical procedure.
Jane Brophy: Yes, so, um, I remember early on when we were talking, I guess you know reckoning with this question of, ‘is it tourism?’, you know what is going on. And I remember, being at, I guess it's probably a bit of a roundtable with other people working on other types of medical travel, and people asking me questions about medical facilitators. And I actually didn't know who they meant. So they, in reference to things like cosmetic surgery tourism, there is, you know, an entire layer, you know, an industry of people who facilitate, help, help you choose your package, help you make decisions about, you know, which beach you want to go to as well. Um, whereas what, what we observed in this space is that it's much more kind of direct to consumer via the Internet, there's not, it's not, you know, as formalised as a as an industry.
But I did, when I visited one biotech company in China, I was getting the tour of the head office and they so, there was an entire kind of crew of people that we came to call concierges, so they they're not necessarily like out and about recruiting, but their job is to manage the experience of being in the clinic, and certainly from an Australian perspective, there's a lot of differences in the types of care you would encounter in Chinese clinical spaces. So, for example, nursing staff don't necessarily attend to, like, non-medical aspects, I realise, that's a bit of a messy term to use, but, you know, in-patients are generally cared for by family members who take care of their food and all sorts of things. So if you're entering into that system as someone without those social structures in place, this kind of developed a need for this layer of staff to manage that therapeutic space and experience for people so, that's one reason that I've came to account for why people may return but not, and just, not necessarily describe any kind of improvement in their clinical health, but they're not they're not dissatisfied with the experience. It met some kind of other need, in a positive way.
Christopher Mayes: Courtney in your work, so Courtney does stuff on death and dying, among other things, but is there, does the tourism thing, because there's, now people travel across you know to other jurisdictions to access end of life treatments, do, does that get called death tourism or things like that.
Courtney Hempton: Suicide tourism is the preferred term, or not the preferred term, the term that is used for people who are you traveling between jurisdictions, so people mostly traveling to Europe to access assistance to die, where they can't access it in their own jurisdiction.
Jane Brophy: Is there, an element of, that kind of harks back to the sort of wellness tourism, and kind of sanitoriums of like, obviously the outcome is different that what wellness tourism was intended for, but I can image a kind of, similar kind of therapeutic narratives about those spaces, is that present?
Courtney Hempton: Yeah, I haven't really traced the origin, but I think, yeah, I presume it's kind of drawing on all of these, these ideas, but certainly in the assisted dying space, I think suicide tourism is used in more of a pejorative sense, and certainly is used as an argument for jurisdictions that don't have assisted dying to legislate for assisted dying, to kind of prevent suicide, suicide tourism, of people needing to go in other jurisdictions, to other jurisdictions. I'm sure there's a whole, I'm sure there's a lot of kind of the tourism is being, any, any kind of travel involved seems to, tourism just seems to be the preferred term to kind of throw on the end to describe an aspect of what's happening.
Jane Brophy: It's interesting you described that dynamic of, well people are going to travel anyway, so we should legislate for it at home, is that what you were, you mentioned?
Courtney Hempton: Yeah, so definitely in campaigns to get law changed, that's one of the arguments it's used that people, people shouldn't have to go overseas, yhey should be able to, you know, by not having this available we're kind of forcing people to make this choice, and there's obviously lots of kind of equity issues around being able to afford to travel to Europe, and particularly if you're planning to die there, there’s then lots of kind of challenges around, you know whether you want, you wanting your body to come back to your home country, etc. So there’s kind of lots of added challenges in the death space.
Jane Brophy: Yeah, I think so many of those themes were present in our research on stem cell tourism. So at the time when we started the research there were really no clinics in Australia offering these sorts of treatments that we knew of, but over the course of the research, like a nascent, local market began to emerge, particularly around the use of stem cells in like sports and rehabilitation medicine, so injecting cells into knees and things like that, which were similarly critiqued by the scientific community as not being based in, you know, sort of rigorous clinical trial testing and things. So, kind of, they were mostly, mostly offered under kind of like the experimental treatment kind of situations in Australia, but the people who were, it's and there's a lot of money to be made in these sorts of treatments, so there's definitely some agitation from people who, who wanted to, to the industry to grow in Australia, saying, well, people are just going to travel anyway, so we should let them do it here. So, and that, to what extent, there was an interplay with patients perceptions of availability. So we encountered from patients, some patients saying, well it's available overseas, so it's just, you know, red tape bureaucratism here in Australia, we're too cautious and, so all sorts of like you know, understandings, potential misunderstanding flying around. You know, with lots of kind of differing interests and, and levels of understanding around like how we regulate science and health and medicine in Australia. And what that, you know, had, what that meant for people who really wanted to try something, even though they, they you know, recognise that it was experimental or, or perhaps not even, not even experimental.
Christopher Mayes: I'm just sort of it a lot, but not at a loss. There's two different, I want to go in two different directions at the same time, but we can only go, one being, one thing, because I think one being the political economy of cruise ships, and then the other being the infodemic, because that's obviously related to the information environments, under which people get to make these decisions and, and all sorts of different things, but just on the political economy of the cruise ships particularly, I mean this cuts back to I guess that Ian Hacking, I think, are people stupid, I think in the wake of COVID-19 most people would, you would think would be sort of pretty adverse to hopping on a cruise ship, but yeah. Just, just that therapeutic environment of the cruise ship and its relationship to stem cell tourism and, would be interesting to hear you talk about?
Jane Brophy: Yes, so, um, I guess in the wake of the various floating princesses bringing COVID to Australia, there was a lot of, I guess, current affairs coverage and, you know being beginning to see interviews from people who were either, that had been on the ships and affected in different ways, but there was, you know, kind of two broad camps of, you know, horrific never going to do it again, shut down the industry, you know, and clearly COVID really shone a spotlight on some of the kind of structural issues in so many ways, the way that space is structured, laboured structured, activities structured on their ships, that has given them that kind of floating petri dish kind of image, but then there were other people who, like there was one couple, I think that, that got it and nearly died, but were sort of saying, you know, we would absolutely go back, and representatives from the cruise ship industries were saying we're already getting pre-ticket sales for when the industry is allowed to restart. And suddenly, that's what you're referring to, there was a lot of eyebrows raised around, you know, why on earth would anyone?, you know, shut it down. But I guess yeah I did pick up on a lot of the people being interviewed, who were saying they would go back, and I think that, you know, to think through it in relation to the stem cell tourism, the ways that the cruise ship industry manage the space very effectively for people who may, may have accessibility issues or, you know may need the assurance of having medical care in close proximity, so you have a ship’s doctor, so, that then gives them access to experiences that may otherwise be out of reach in the community in Australia. So in terms of weighing up potential risk, for some people who are kind of diehards of the cruise ship community and get so much kind of therapeutic benefit, which to some other people may look like absolutely awful experiences, but, um, you know, I can, I can sort of see how the cruise ships manage that experience really effectively to provide an experience for people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to travel, or get out and have someone else take care of them for a little while.
Courtney Hempton: So is it all, I, I don't know a lot about the cruise industry, but is it all very, like, are they kind of X is a fancier cruise than Y, I presume that exists, but is it also a bit like it's Titanic, and we kind of have class levels within the one ship?
Jane Brophy: Yeah, I would say, um, those dynamics are very present. I guess, thinking back to the stem cell tourism space, there was a lot of kind of boundary making about like, well, we're not the dodgy operators, they’re the dodgy operators, and you know, and patients kind of taking that up as well of, like, well, I did my research on, you know, and you know, to a large extent, looking at the, the options for treatments in China, there was very much, you know, a wide variety of different facilities, and you know, that that would deliver very different experiences, so I can imagine that, that similar kind of like. Well, I guess it would make sense from an industry perspective to have a diversification of your client base or consumer base, to be able to, you know, sell the kind of high class, or, you know, high, high quality experience, and then, but then kind of sell a larger number of tickets for people who are willing to accept a slightly lower standard of cruising. Yeah.
Christopher Mayes: And so a lot of this, like across these different examples and cases that we've talked about is this, I guess, the role of the market, the role of the internet, the spread of information, who can, and it then allowing individuals to nassess their own risk and engaging in these practices, or leisure activities, or medical procedures. And so this comes to this interesting idea that you've mentioned of infodemic, that I think, am I pronouncing that right, from the WHO, the World Health Organization, the defunded World Health Organization, is talking, so yeah, it'd be interesting to hear about how this idea impacts on people's health, and yeah, the dynamics of people wanting to be able to make their own choices, but those choices are going to really depend on the information that's available to them.
Jane Brophy: Yes, so we, this was already being part of our research into how people were making choices about stem cell treatments and, in terms of the informational environments in which they were making their decisions, and so the, that industry is particularly based on direct to consumer marketing via the Internet. And there was also kind of a strong, peer to peer kind of, you know, research dynamic there, and it was somewhat in, a lot of people described feeling frustrated by the advice and information that they were getting from medical professionals, feeling like they were being shut down, the internet providing a forum where they could, you know, I guess the phrase, we as might use pejoratively, you know people talking about doing their own research, and the kinds of spaces in which you know that, um, I guess information literacy, very different abilities to judge the informational quality of different information from different sources on the internet. And so the WHO, they declared this infodemic, particularly in response, that was earlier this year, and they've had a couple of meetings to try to establish a community of practice and knowledge in relation to how we manage the health risks of false or misleading health information. And so this was this concern was particularly prompted by misinformation being shared around COVID, and potentially you know having disastrous consequences of undermining public health efforts when, when the, the informational environment, you know, when the understanding of the pandemic itself was already imperfect and evolving. And so having a sense I think of trying to figure out how to limit the health fallout of, of, I guess, conspiracy theories and, yeah, the sharing, sharing of misleading information that can, I think, I think you can think through the, the health risks that a number of levels so personal, social, societal, you know, there are a number of levels in which to think about what, the circulation of false or deliberately or accidentally misleading information can have.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, I've noticed when I have shared these podcasts on Instagram. You can follow us on Instagram, friends, if you're if you're more on Instagram-er than a Twitter person, but that yeah, because I think it only does happen on Instagram, I haven't noticed on Twitter, but if I do a #COVID, as I will with this episode, they, there will be added to it a government link to say you have, you know, it says something like, we noticed that you are mentioned COVID you know, in this post and it provides then a link for, I guess, other people to follow up on, you know they can click and get the authoritative take, the government take on COVID, rather than our half-baked analyses.
Jane Brophy: Yeah, I guess I'm, I mean, I guess, that raises the question that, for someone like me kind of leaving in a COVID hotspot in Melbourne, I'm not immune from the risk of sharing misleading information on social media, either. So, when you know in a time of crisis, it can be easy to kind of let your guard down a bit, especially when it's sort of impacting you so, so personally. So I'm certainly not trying to say that, we are the arbiters of truth and perfect health advice, either.
Christopher Mayes: No, no. But, uh, yeah. It's just, I guess that's a way that, at least the Australian government seeing to control potential misleading information. Yeah.
Jane Brophy: Yeah. It will be interesting to see what comes out of the WHO activities in terms of what they're identifying and how they're defining the spaces in which information may be operating. I think, you know I the, maybe I, and I guess the kinds of challenges that they may face with social media companies and the ability to impose or regulate, impose regulations or enforce regulations around that. But I'm sure there’s also much kind of darker corners of the web there even less accessible.
Christopher Mayes: Darker than Twitter? But I guess it will also…
Jane Brophy: Oh, Chris, that is delightfully naïve.
Courtney Hempton: So wholesome.
Christopher Mayes: …I think it'll depend as well on the condition. Like, I think it would, I would assume that, you know, in the more speculative areas of medical tourism or stem cell tourism, when dealing with chronic conditions. So it's a, with an infectious disease as, there’s clearer, there's clear information, arguably, as to how the diseases spread and whether, where say, say things I've looked at, and so weight loss, there's all sorts of snake oil that goes, you know it's presented on mainstream news, let alone advertised, you know fasting diet and all of those sorts of things.
Jane Brophy: Yeah, it doesn't even have to be that nefarious. I know in the stem cell space there was a period of time where the International Society for Stem Cell Research was trying to explore ways to mark out kind of supposed dodgy operators, but they then face legal challenges from people who, being singled and so then that really created a lot of challenges that, you know so much kind of boundary making of who gets to decide what is false information or misleading information, and what are the implications for that, you know in a market economy, um, when yeah there are a lot of people, I guess there's a lot at stake financially and health wise. Um, so I guess these are some of the issues that were probably brewing for, people ended up connect, connected to the WHO, who, who were kind of trying to get on the same page about, you know, well, I guess, you know, on one level, you know snake oil salesman has been operating for years and, you know it's not, that's not a particularly new phenomenon, but I guess. The kinds of that infrastructure, the internet, you know, in what ways is this shaping and reshaping the challenges associated with you know, simply too much information. And, and the kind of destabilisation of the experts and, you know, who, who do we look to for information. And who do we trust for information. I think that's, you know, it's still early days, and in that kind of knowledge community in terms of drawing together all the kind of different threads of, of, you know, after a period of reflection that you know in the internet age and, identifying new challenges that you know, need a bit more of a shared understanding across communities of practice and knowledge.
Courtney Hempton: Um, another topic that we're hoping to discuss is an, is somewhat perhaps related to the infodemic, particularly relation to COVID-19, is the concept of hygiene theatre, which I just find that term highly fascinating and would love it love to hear, hear more about it. Um, so yeah, so if Jane, if you want to explain hygiene theatre, and how that's, I guess the function that that might serve in the current context and perhaps what are the effects of, of hygiene theatre?
Jane Brophy: Yeah. Um, so this this term was, well brought to my attention recently by someone who is interested in the concept of security theatre in the wake of 911, and with, you know, heightened anxieties around what keeps us safe. So things like you know security wands, and taking our shoes off at airports and things like that. So they would sort of thinking you know to what extent do all these kinds of new ways of doing hygiene in the wake of COVID, to what extent do they keep us safe and to what, to what extent are they, have roots in, so to what extent do they have, so to what extent do these new measures have a foundation in hygiene and sanitation, you know. Are there other functions of, I guess this, you know, to put it into that that analogy of theatre, to what extent to these performances, simply about containing the pathogen, do they have other functions. So this brought me back to the work of Mary Douglas that I used in my master's thesis. And so she was a social anthropologist, she was interested in the idea I guess she, she proposed this, this idea that dirt, dirt is simply, if you if you remove it from its context of like being, having a pathogenic basis, or or being covered in bacteria, the dirt is simply matter out of place. And so if, if matter is not inherently unhygienic or, you know, you're not likely to get sick from it, what do all these kind of cleaning practices, what, what functions do they serve. And so, so bear with me.
So I think one really interesting example that I've been noticing is these kind of ritual cleansings of supermarkets and schools. And I guess one of the first kind of instances of these pieces of theatre with, when Peter Dutton contracted COVID, and we saw images, you know, late night cleaning of his, his offices, with people in hazmat suits and spraying the ceiling with, you know. I think there were a few eyebrows raised around, well, what do we know about the virus, what, to what extent is all of this necessary, what is the function of this kind of performance that's being beamed to us, you know, on the nightly news. And I think that's becoming more and more of a, lie regular occurrence as we see schools shut down and supermarkets shut down. And I guess, to to read that with Mary Douglas, with most of Melbourne shut down, we still have these spaces that are central to, you know, how we function in society. And so if we hear of an instance of, you know someone testing positive for COVID, is it possible that this, being closed for cleaning, is a way of kind of performing a, a ritualised cleansing of a space to make it feel safe again for us, because we have to return. So yeah, that's where my mind was going with, with all of those ideas and, and you know, I certainly don't mean to suggest that there's no material basis and there's no bacteria, but.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, but it's fascinating and I think, it does come out in all sorts of ways, and especially that rhetoric of a ‘deep clean’ have a space, like we, in various institutions where there's been yet an announcement that there was a COVID case, there'll be reassuring email sent to say that you know that the hazmat people have gone in to give it a deep clean.
Jane Brophy: I sort of think in, in the in the supermarket context, what does that even mean? Is every product being wiped down, is every, you know, our understanding of surface transmission is still evolving, you know. And then that's kind of, I guess the, the anxieties around even getting food home orders and, and people trying to figure out do I wipe down every single product, do I…
Christopher Mayes: I put everything in the microwave. It just takes takes care of it all.
Jane Brophy: Yeah, I think the yeah the, these kinds of, you know, more, like public displays have really, like have implications for how we personally do hygiene and how we experience and make meaning of, you know, our potential risk of getting COVID and you know I think people, the ways that people; we’re being asked to make complex risk assessments in a way that we've potentially never been asked to before, and so, you know, the individual responses that people are having a really, it's, you know, showing like very diverse ways in which people understand or place meaning in different types of risk.
Yeah, and I guess you know this is always going to be a question that will stick with me in my, you know, potentially new direction in public health of, like, what's the impact of, of the intersection between public health education around interventions that they, in conjunction with you know, policing, so so not necessarily having the time to really explain the function and reason for certain PPE, and so yeah, I think that was always the, that was the concern initially with advice around masks, that people not being able to use them properly were potentially putting they're, going to put themselves at greater risk. Then it, the thinking changed as the as the understanding of the virus changed. And potentially the need to normalise behaviour. And so I think that's another function of hygiene theatre in the sense of, well, I guess, to come, to bring it full circle back to the vipers being released in Beijing, you know, some public health interventions may, whether by design or accident, have the intention or, intention of engendering a certain type of new behaviour, or stamping out behaviour that was previously seen as, as undesirable, but to what extent that's actually related to the virus. You know, in hindsight, you know, we may want to have a bit more time to reflect on that.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think something that is related to that, and you mentioned policing, and then the example I guess of security theatre, leading into hygiene theatre, but the interconnection between public health and the police, and whether, you know, some would say by accident, others like saint Michel Foucault would say, by design, the police and public health work quite close together historically, and as we're seeing the presently and the degree to which the police yeah, play that role in hygiene theatre.
Jane Brophy: It's been fascinating. The last few days, seeing our, Brett Sutton, the Chief Medical Officer, basically admitting that that the curfew was, you know, not necessarily based on health advice, so it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out. And you know, it's, it's your, your reference to Foucault sort of makes me think like, we're all Foucauldians now. People who haven't, who traditionally haven't been subject to restrictive policing practices are suddenly discovering that actually, they might be a little bit arbitrary after all. And, and some people may experience a greater rates of policing than others.
Christopher Mayes: Yeah, although there has been some research showing that it's still those, well, as you're well aware I mean, yeah, the communities who, everyone is just getting policed more, I guess. So, the ones who are already over-policed are even more over-policed.
And, unfortunately we're gonna have to wrap it up. But it's been fascinating talking with you, Jane, really interesting stuff and yeah,
Jane Brophy: Yeah, it's been, really, really thank you for letting me indulge all of my various strands of thought under lockdown.
Courtney Hempton: Thank you so much, Jane. I'm really looking forward to the work that you're producing in your new public health space, I think there's no shortage of ideas that we've spoken about that, I'm sure you'll have very interesting things to, to say on.
Courtney Hempton:
Thank you for listening to Undisciplinary. You can find further information about the podcast at our website, Undisciplinary dot org [Undisciplinary.org], and you also follow us on Twitter at Undisciplinary underscore [Undisciplinary_], and you can continue listening to Undisciplinary, and find past episodes in all the usual pod places, where you can subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. Appreciation! Bye.
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