Fever at the Border. About the 2011's FMD (Foot and Mouth Disease) Outbreak in Strandža (Bulgaria/Turkey)
Résumé
This paper examines the production and the effects of a sanitary crisis, namely the Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) epidemic that broke out in the Strandža region, at the Bulgarian-Turkish border in 2011. Limited to the afflicted region in its concrete effects, the disease nevertheless had a real media and symbolic impact on a national and even international scale. Striking a border region deemed for its economic isolation, but also its image of “authentic” Bulgarian countryside located on the external borders of the EU since 2007, this sanitary crisis was perceived as a sign of the uncertainties and anxieties surrounding a peripheral area. I examine in particular the perception of the disease as coming from the “other side” and its ambivalent “Europeanization” through the imposition of EU sanitary standards. This sanitary crisis allows one to explore changing border issues in a region once strictly closed, where the border now appears both as open and locally out of control, in the face of global stakes and powerful neighbours.