SOC 409Health, Surveillance, and Law

In this course students will examine how state institutions mobilize public health expertise for regulatory purposes that are instantiated in law and carried out through various forms of social surveillance. With a focus on research in a range of topical fields such as regulatory responses to infectious disease and pandemics, the regulation of people who use drugs, and criminal legal responses to mental health crises, students will apply socio-legal theories to understand and critically evaluate the forms of coercive legal power, intensive surveillance, and formal and informal social control that are authorized in the name of public health.