Science, Surveillance, and the Politics of Redress in Health Disparities Research

The outgrowth of an ongoing empirical study of funding policy and practice in a federal health science agency, this paper draws upon critical approaches to public health to problematize "health disparities." Social policy critiques often recognize the historicity of human difference that emerged in conjunction with the colonial Western project. That history establishes a particular tenor to how contemporary health policy makers and scientists think about vulnerable populations, public health, and social justice. But it goes beyond the politics of redistribution and recognition—as in, for example, Nancy Fraser's philosophies—that seek to explicate how political interests are defined in the public sphere.