Sovereignty Beyond the Human: ASF in the German-Polish Borderland

Abstract

In this paper, we explore sovereignty over territory and animal population health (intersecting borderlines) via spatial logics of disease control measures addressing African swine fever (ASF), a hemorrhagic fever caused by a virus (African swine fever virus; ASFV) that is deadly for wild boars and pigs. Biosecurity understandings rooted in epidemiology and situated at the farm and lab are challenged by the expansive geography of ASF. Wild boars’ cross-border mobility, along with human factors, further contribute to the spread of ASF across the landscape. Under orders from veterinary authorities, enrolled actors on both sides of the territorial border between Germany and Poland seek to limit ASF’s spread. Ethnographic research methods combined with an analysis of narratives in official statements/ media sources reveal the countries’ incongruences in applying spatial confinement measures and enrolled actors’ relational understandings of ASF risk that differ in placing blame over these borderlines. As a result of a perceived knowledge gap, fences are not erected on the Polish side, along with other measures deemed necessary by the German authorities to control the disease spread among wild boars. In attempting to resolve this gap in the biosecurity apparatus over controlling the intraspecies boundary, territorial borders are reinstated, and a spatial gap is enlarged between it and that of pigs and wild boars. However, the insurance of sovereignty aimed at controlling one’s territory and over animal health populations in doing so remains influenced by economic and social differences in relation to domestic pig economies and wild boar populations that create rifts in possible cross-border and cross-group cooperation.