Global Assemblages

In the last post I wrote talking about maps and how them works in relation with biosecurity, I pointed out one concept that I want to explain better today. This is global assemblage.

Global assemblage is a concept highlighted by Collier and Ong and that is applied to several currently problems from an anthropological view. Thus, in the book titled Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, mentioned authors and others (for instance, Paul Rabinow) talk about this conception in bioscience, right, ethics or populations.

However, what is a Global Assemblage? In Collier and Ong words:

<<Global assemblages are sites for the formation and reformation of what we will call, following Paul Rabinow, anthropological problems. They are domains in which the forms and values of individual and collective existence are problematized or at stake, in the sense that they are subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention>>

Instead we are not work exactly this concept, we are using some approximations that follows the same sense of one key feature of global assemblages, that is, the quality to de-territorialize and re-territorialize. For us, a Global Assemblage would be a kind of operator or dispositif (In the Foucaultian sense) constituted by some techno-scientific elements that can deploy their webs in a variety of social scales (within a seamless as techno-scientific-social works in the Actor Network-Theory): macro (European Union,-level, World-Health Organization-level); mezzo (States-level) and micro (citizenship-level). Thus, one of this techno-scientific element is the realm of biosecurity

What we are paying attention is in this question: how the techno-scientific network of biosecurity is being articulated in those different scales? All kind of answer will be welcomed because we do not have response yet. Nonetheless, one way of research would be understand the macro and mezzo scales because of the practices carried out at the micro level. Some apps for smartphone like HealthMap are able to see all diseases around the world in the current moment and further, registry any new if we are alerted for it. After that, the mezzo and consequently the macro level would be activated in order to check these alarms out and carry out actions in order to cut them off or prevent a major outbreak or pandemics (inside the preparedness logic).

Another possibility in order to apply the global assemblages concept to biosecurity would be to try understand how them are linked with a global vision of the world given by disease’ maps that are more and more frequents accompanying research’ texts about one new outbreak. In fact, when we look to these maps, we are observing not only global-scale events, but also the folding of little practices that biosecurity as a global-assemblage is constantly re-territorializing in local territories; adapting and keeping their global form each time.

References:

Ong, A. y Collier, S. (2005).  Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Oxford: Blackwell.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user NASA Goddar Space Flight Center

About maps

As I pointed out in the last post, movement is a key concept in the new regime of (bio)politics, becoming a central issue of what we conceive as cinepolitics. Thus, the topic of today is about one source of information understudied yet in social sciences: maps.

We are studying maps as a technology-as-mediator as Latour says, that is, we conceive maps as an element inside of a net where the actant (in this case, biosurveillance), is constituted. We are currently managing several theories in order to analyse maps, as the Panorama Concept by Latour, or the difference between observation andsurveillance that Michel Serres proposes. We are also trying to apply the Deleuzian concept of diagram in order to explain how maps works as an element that folds scales between a very local event and a global issue, deterritorializing and reterritorializing the cinepolitics entanglement and completing the management process in a total-surveillance-world. We will write about an interesting topic soon, called Global Assemblages.

However, what kind of maps and why this kind of illustrations? Inside Actor-Network Theory there is a large tradition of social studies of sciences where images, maps and graphics have an important role as an immutable mobile, that is, as a key form to translate the knowledge created in a laboratory to expand it outside and with the purpose of connecting with other laboratories, sources of fund, citizenships, power positions, etc. This kind of information are very important in ethnographical studies as Latour or Law as we can read in the classic study of how a scientist works in order to achieve a graphic where is gathered the whole knowledge, practises and others elements that shape a heart’ rat performance.

Hence, we have collected several CDC and WHO maps in order to study infectious vectors movement (ebolavirus, N1H1, AIDS, SARS…). I cannot advance much conclusions, but what we are inquiring is a shift in the form as biosurveillance works from this spotlight in the movement at the beginning of XXI century.

References:

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford University Press.

Serres, M. (2008). The Five Senses. London: Continuum. 

Tirado, F. (2008). Michel Foucault: biopolítica e intuición de la cinepolítica. Congress: Aportes de Michel Foucault al pensamiento contemporáneo. Barcelona.

Photo Credit: Flickr user, Ann Martin.

Cinepolitics and Biosecurity

The post I want to publish today is about a new condition we are researching in relation with biosecurity and the politic management, surveillance and power.

In fact, as I have already written a post where I talk about biosecurity and biopolitics, pointing out some short ideas mentioning the work of Foucault, Agamben or Negri, for instance. The reason for the brevity of that post is we are deploying a work where biopolitics would give away to cinepolitics, that is to say, the management of movement or flows, and no longer souls or bodies as it happens in biopolitics.

However, what is cinepolitics exactly? As Tirado (2010) says, consists in a highlight into the Foucault notion of movement within biopolitics. In this sense, Foucault assumes that movement is one variable that is added to either vital and biologics that shape biopolitics. Nonetheless, in cinepolitics the key concept is this movement, located at the same level of biology where control and management is carried out by the exchange and motility.

Thus, control and management is exercised throughout the movement of data (in a Nikolas Rose interpretation), information (maybe XXXX) or bioactants in this case. For instance, a virus that is transported by a flock of sheep or bacteria that comes from a tropical country to Europe through an air travel. The result is typically shown in maps where fluxes are enacted with arrows or lines. Because of this, bodies are no longer the key concept of management: there is a shift where bodies become solely a further element, that is to say, one bioactant more in the set of bioactants put on stage. Now, we can say that one essential feature of bioactant is the need of movement.

In this realm of cinepolitics, bodies are transformed: we are in front of open bodies, bodies that lookout better than look in, and waiting for connections with other bioactants. The most important issue then, is not what is connected but how is the connection:

a    a) The connection folds space and time: bioactants perform as acceleration operators. 

    b)The body is no longer self-contained: body is one element that flows and is monitored due to its open nature. Body is constituted by a set of little bodies (human-virus-bacteria-animals) that is a potential risk from others bioactants (flocks, population… but also economy, public infrastructure…).

References:

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be Defended. New York: Picador.

Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Tirado, Francisco. Baleriola, Enrique. Amaral Giordani, M. Do. A. Giordani, Tiago. Torrejón, Pedro. (2014). Subjetividad y subjetivadores en las tecnologías de bioseguridad en la Unión Europea. Polis e Psique, 3(4), 23-50.

Tirado, F. (2010). Cinepolítica y cinevalor: la gran transformación de la biopolítica. In Ignacio Mendiola (ed.) Rastros y rostros de la biopolítica. Barcelona: Anthropos.

PhotoCredit: Flickr, user Alexander Babashov

Methodology in social studies of biosecurity

For today’s post, I want to talk about one question shortly explained until now, and this is how our methodological approach to the issue of biosecurity is:

Generally, for the major of our papers we rely in two key concepts: study case and thick description, in this order.

Study case is a technic for recollect data that starts under de conception that around one research goal or question all kind of tool for the collection’ data is appropriate. Hence, we usually collect diverse documents about our particular issue (biosecurity, biosurveillance, ebola, epidemics in general…) like European regulations, state regulations, hospital and laboratory protocols, news of press. Nevertheless, study case does not use documents: it is also supported by interviews (transcribed), ethnographic notes, and other kind of material related with the concrete topic as can be images, videos or graphics.

Once we have this material, which frequently is facilitated by some informants or a key person, we proceed to analyse it among the entire group, first studying it deeply individually, reading and extracting notes, fragments and some related material. Then, discussing about it in group, extracting new ideas, concepts, and linking it with some theoretical concepts, older analysis, a relevant and current event perhaps, or classifying it in different ideas that we consider they have the potential to be developed.

I have to point out about the need of work with written material in any case (documents, transcriptions, ethnographical noted, etc.). Unlike some socioconstructionist of discursive traditions, all of these empiric materials is treated as a technology-as-mediator as I already wrote in this post. In this sense, we use within an exercise of mediation between other entities that endure in the space and time. Mediation, within the Actor-Network Theory, is a complex and multi-meaning concept that can be understood as translation, composition, reversibility of the blackboxing process and delegation (for more information about it, you can consult this paper, in Spanish).

The second key concept was thick description. Thick description is a concept quite used in anthropology and some critical social theories that is attributed to Geertz. We use it as a second step after we have done the study case. Thick description consists in a report or narration whereby we want to reach several levels of research, as description and explanation. One of the main features of this concept is his microscope level. This means that in order to study a global o general issue as power, change or conflict, we have to recontextualize them in the perception of details and emphasizing the little acts of the interaction: the best question are constituted from many and concrete little interactions. These little interactions are extracted from the analysis carried out in the study case.

In order to get more severity and strength to our research, thick description is frequently attached with a traditional explanation given by Latour and briefed in his concept of saturated description. For him, to saturate the description consists in folding the description: the more saturated is the description of the studied issue, the better will be the outcome of it. Latour uses the Latin etymology of the word explanation (the prefix ex- and the base plicare) that means literally unfold or deployment, a description ultimately.

The outcome of both of this concepts study case and thick description, is what we use for our work in papers, conferences and book chapters, and is a very useful way of group work. Currently, we are begin to use the multimodal analysis in order to analyse images and other kind of graphics.

References:

Geertz, C. (2003). La interpretación de las culturas. Barcelona: Gedisa.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality. A social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Comunication. New York: Routledge.

Latour, B. (1998). De la mediación técnica: filosofía, sociología, genealogía. En Domènech, M. y Tirado, F. (eds.), Sociología Simétrica. Ensayos sobre ciencia, tecnología y sociedad. Barcelona: Gedisa.

Yin, R. K. (1994). Case Study Research. Design and Methods. London: SAGE, 1994.

PhotoCredit: Flickr, user Javier Vázquez

Upcoming paper II: Cosmopolitics and Biopolitics in the Biosecurity Regimes of the European Union

As I said in the last post, we have been reported that two of our papers will be published soon. I have already talked about the first one, and now, I am go to give some ideas about the second one: Cosmopolitics, Biopolitics and Biosecurity.

For this paper, we begin talking about a new shift in the early XXI century in the realm of security –as Foucault pointed out in Security, Territory and Population – to the biosecurity. I have wrote something about it here.

The main question in this paper is about Cosmopolitics, and for that, we have used the Stengers conception. Hence, cosmopolitics can be defined as politics referred to the production of a common cosmos, an arena of action that we share and that evolves us, affecting to all of us in our daily routines. I am aware the concept is quite more complex but it will be explain in the paper.

Thus, from this concept we want to argue that currently, life is problematized and has become a new veridiction object: cosmopolitics and biopolitics are the two sides of the same dispositif that grows and makes sense reconceptualising life in the way that was understood by Science in the XIX and XX centuries.

But, what about this new life? We have stablished five main axes:

-         - Life if movement

-          -Life is threat

-          -Life is economy

-          -Life is displayable

-          -Life is a multi-scale event

The way we have operate for this five axes is to create a thick description where we have illustrate all of them with European regulations and council directives, some  images and other kind of materials about the biosecurity topic.

Finally, we conclude with a compilation of cosmopolitics consequences that justifies our analysis, supported by some biopolitics ideas in order to refresh the foucauldian notion.


References:

Foucault, M. (2009). Security, Territory and Population. New York: Picador. 


Photo Credit: By myself supported by myFnetwork

Upcoming paper: subjectivity and subjectifiers in European Union technologies of biosecurity

We have been reported that in the coming days, two of our new papers will be published in both Brazilian and Chilean journals of Social Sciences. The first of them is titled Subjectivity and Subjetifiers in European Union Technologies of Bioecurity, and here I am go to make and advance for all of you.

To this paper, we worked with some Spanish online-press news that pointing forward virus, bacteria, outbreaks or pandemics. Our aim was to describe some ideas in an Actor-Network Theory sense, where we can understand this news as a mediator-technology in the Latour theory. Hence, using some extracts of this news, we can illustrate the idea of subjectifier and scenario.

We understand subjectifiers as an element that offers to subject the possibility of a connexion with a reflective effect. A subjectifier is a portion of knowledge, ideas, images; that allow the person define itself. For the idea of scenario, we defined it as an element defined by having an affect attached to it. In this sense, throughout the paper we expose some illustrative examples about these concepts with the press-news, following the case of study methodology’ tradition. A scenario is the outcome of the connection of several subjectifiers, offering an affection with which to assess and complete the reflective exercise offered by subjectifiers.

As conclusion, we point out that biosecurity is not only to protect the population against some diverse biohazards, but referring to discourses, practices, images, laws, protocols, etc.

Finally, in order to understand the relation between biosecurity and subjectivity is necessary to use the technology-as-mediator concept. This deal is not about a narrative creation and an internalization of it later; but a connections issue, linked to mobile elements.

References:

Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s Hope, London: Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social, New York: Oxford University Press.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Procsilas Moscas (http://bit.ly/1uq4ICV)

Bioactants

One of the key concepts on my dissertation is bioactant, and hence, the topic I talk today is about it.

Bioactant is a new concept I thought one year ago, when I was beginning to read some ideas from Lakoff, Rabinow, Collier and others anthropologists, as well as I was also deepening in the Actor-Network Theory. Product of both of these studies, I started to fit the jigsaw and I considered this concept was helpful in order to understand certain current issues about biopolitics and the bios management.

Thus, in short, bioactant can be defined as whatever equipment which action implies a reorganization or a shift in the biotic. I am aware is a general definition, but I prefer it that way because the same nature of the concept comes from a global-scale that can be grounded or located, but otherwise, starting on the local is quite difficult to find common elements.

On the other hand, when I point out the biotic I am referring to any kind of life, taking into account that life never is just one animal, person, cell or bacterium (as I wrote about ebola). Rather I conceive it as an entanglement which result is a living-being, where living is the feature given to this being (i.e. we live with millions of bacteria over our skin, and there are one of the equipment that allows us to be understood as a living being). With this example, we can conceive bacteria as a bioactant that grants any feature to other thing within a biotic realm.

Equipment should be understood in a Actor-Network Theory, as an plug-in that is attached with us. Latour wrote about it in Reassembling the Social. For sure, I don't have totally clear this idea, but is true that there is something about the notion of paraskeue that Foucault puts forward in The Hermeneutics of the Subject.

Nevertheless, there are also bioactants that give a negative feature or that take away some feature to the thing that is assembled. Considering the traditional difference between bíos and zoé at the Greek age, pointed out by Agamben, some bioactants can transform a bíos, the valuable life in Rose terms in a merely zoé, non-valuable life. This shift can be investigated under a thanatopolitics view, the management of death.

Finally, within the Actor-Network Theory, a bioactant is an actant in the Greimàs sense and defined by Latour as be anything provided it is granted to be the source of an action, with the incorporation of a biotic sense or with some direct or indirect biotic implication.

References:

Agamen, G. (1996). Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Standford University-Press.
Foucault, M. (2005). The Hermeneutics of the Subject. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Greimas, A.L. y Courtès, J. (1982) Semiótica. Diccionario razonado de la teoría del lenguaje. Madrid: Gredos

Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory. A few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47, 1996, p. 369-382

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford.

Rabinow, P. Rose, N. (2006). Biopower Today. BioSocieties, 1, 195-217.

Photocredit: taken by myself.

Biopolitics & Biosecurity

In the last post I wrote were pointed out some ideas questioning if ebolavirus could be understood not merely as a virus, but a complex and heterogeneous entanglement constituted by artifacts, machines, technologies and other kind of materialities. Although I not mentioned it, there are other kind of elements like discourses, scientists, ideologies, enterprises, stakeholders and customers, for instance.

My dissertation is titled “Bioactants and biopolitics in the Preparedness and Surveillance Projects of the European Union” in line with one of the social interpretations of this topic. Biopolitics is a term within a large tradition in social sciences, whose most influent author was Michel Foucault although Rudolf Kjellén created the term.

Biopolitics as Foucault defined it: power over life has been exercised in the twin forms of the "anatomo-politics of the human body" and the "biopolitics of population." Both powers—that of bodily disciplines and that of the government of the population—are thus articulated around sexuality, and they support and reinforce each other.

Despite Foucault wrote  “The Birth of Biopolitics” or “Society must be Defended” talking about this management of life since the rise of Liberalism applied to sexuality, the jail or the asylum; it was not until Rabinow, Rose, Agamben, Negri or Espósito when biopolitics studies took off and were updated over the years because Foucault died in 1984. Thus, we can see Rabinow for instance:

We can use the term ‘biopolitics’ to embrace all the specific strategies and contestations over problematizations of collective human vitality, morbidity and mortality; over the forms of knowledge, regimes of authority and practices of intervention that are desirable, legitimate and efficacious.

Also Agamben when apply biopolitics to the bare life understood as the greek bíos reduced to zoé, a kind of life that emerges in an increasingly an even more naturalized state of exception.

Regarding biosecurity, I argue the turn into the logic of government from precaution to preparedness in the last decades also have biopolitical consequences:

•   New epidemics, outbreaks and diseases from this logic of preparedness look for an anticipatory knowledge of the emergence. This is achieved with new surveillance techniques based on computer and BigData technology where population are no longer conceived as a closed body, but an inter-connected body, intervened and embodied in dataflows and enacted in maps or diagrams.
• 
  
• Preparedness is bring to present a future possible threat through a new form of risk calculation: scenario planning. Thus, the management of life, bíos in the Agamben sense, become real in the present from a virtual future.
• 
  
• Life is redefined. From now, life can no longer be conceived aside from neither biotechnology nor bioscientific knowledge. What is life today, is defined by this kind of knowledge and no by right, law or royal power.

More info:

Rabinow's webpage 

References:

Agamben, G. (1995). Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. California: Standfor University Press.

Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be Defended. New York: Picador.

Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rabinow, P. Nikolas, R. (2006). Biopower Today. Biosocieties, 1, 195-217.

Photo Credit: Flickr User Cesar Harada 

What if ebola was not (only) a virus?

In my recent work, I have been reading a particular paper quite interesting titled Surveilling strange materialities: categorisation in the evolving geographies of FMD biosecurity by Andrew Donaldson and David Wood. In it, authors point out some concepts related with Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and purpose the term strange materialities as “a very real hybrid entity that cannot be ignored, that exists in and interferes with materialities that are perceived to be otherwise properly ordered”. 

This remind me the classical actant concept of ANT and the blackboxing process, and I think ebola is a good issue which to apply some this theories.

Indeed, the virus properly as a biological entity is only a part of a network of connected elements that, together, allow an infection could happen, states take actions to self-protect, or citizens become scared. The best illustration is the living-together feature that is currently assumed in the scientific realm: ebolavirus needs other organisms to spread. However, they are necessary not only living beings, for instance, in order to epidemics arrive to Europe, is necessary an aircraft technology; or to be spread by West African countries, the existence of cars or bikes is required.

Nevertheless, ebola also needs news and press from which we witness daily, because without them, people would ignore the characteristics of the virus, and feelings of urgency and fear would not exist. Scientists need to inoculate the virus in pipettes and complex laboratory machines to create vaccines and investigate how propagation occurs.

In short, ebola strictly as a virus needs a whole structure in order to understand everything published about it in both scientific and daily realms. Ebola, as simplex virus, is nothing.

Next post, we will talk about some consequences of it in terms of biopolitics.

References:

Domènech, M. Tirado, F., Comps. (1998). Sociología simétrica. Ensayos sobre ciencia, tecnología y sociedad. Barcelona: Gedisa.

Donaldson, A. Wood, D. (2004). Surveilling Strange Materialities: Categorisation in the evolving geographies of FMD Biosecurity. Enviroment and Planning D. 22, 373-391.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. New York: Oxford.

Latour, B. (1991). Technology is Society Made Durable. In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination (Ed. John Law). Routledge, 132-161.

Photo Credit: DFID, UK Department for International Development (http://bit.ly/1y76NcL)