A new project has been achieved!

As I posted the last time, we have a great new to share with all of us: we have achieved an I+D project by the Government of Spain for threes years!

This project is called "Citizen Participation in Social Aproppiation of Knowledge and Technological Design Processes" head by Francisco Tirado and Miquel Domènech and funded by the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Government of Spain. It has begun on 1th January 2015 and it ends on 31th December 2017. His reference is CSO2014-59136-P.

We have made an "abstract" about his content and his future lines of investigation for these threes years:

In our societies of knowledge it is a usual topic to show the enormous difficulties that daily people experiment when they want to participate in the processes of definition of social politics and common services. Frequently, it is put forward that such situation is inevitable because of the mentioned politics and services are based on specific and complex technoscientific developments. Nevertheless, in the last decade it has appeared an important scientific and political tradition questioning that affirmation. This tradition poses lay people have the right to participate in the production of a knowledge and technology that is thought and designed in order to improve, precisely, their lives. Such participation means both a relevant improvement in the quality of our democracies and a better definition and acceptation of the technoscientific products and results.

Our research is based on this tradition and we propose the following hipothesis: the social appropiation of expert knowledge and the citizen participation conform a important democratic value. This has to be strengthen and the ways it works have to be deeply analysed in order to figure out the dimensions and variables that can facilitate a permanent relation between lay people and experts. In this sense, we put forward two main objectives:

1. To analyse the dimensions which are working in the social appropiation of expert knowledge. That is, to examine the psicosocial, cultural and individual elements that are intervening in that practice of appropiation.

2. To evaluate and to establish what kind of elements are facilitating the citizen participation in the development of expert knowledge and technology.

Every main objective is composed by the following specific objectives:

-1.1 To establish the set of actors intervening in the definition of biosecurity protocols.
-1.2 To analyse the biosecurity protocols used in research laboratories, health centres specialized in infectious diseases and army units focused on biological war.
-1.3 To analyse how are used the mentioned biosecurity protocols.
-1.4 To analyse how daily practices about biological risk are conformed and acquired meaning.
-1.5 To design and to carry out a citizen panel in which experts and lay people will share their opinion about the production of knowledge on biosecurity.

-2.1. To make an inventory of the different experiences on participatory design in Spain in the field of Health technologies.
-2.2. To analyse both the different strategies followed in the participatory design experiences listed in the previous objective and their main results.
-2.3. To sketch a social network with the mentioned experiences.
-2.4. To design and to carry out a participatory process collaborating with a team of engineers in the field of Health Technologies.
-2.5. To analyse the pros and cons of a participatory design.
-2.6. To prepare suggestions and recommendations useful for teams of engineers interested in introducing participatory strategies in their processes of design.

From now, we will focus in this project, so we will be posting about it in the future. You can check all of our novelties in this blog and in our webpage: http://pobics.wix.com/pobics

Thank you so much for reading!

Photo Credit, Flickr, user Stuart

Weekly seminary: Homo Sacer & Giorgio Agamben

This week we have another meeting in order to discuss about the book by Agamben, Homo Sacer. Although the reunion will be this wednesday, in this case we want to talk about it before because in the next post (Thursday), we will announce an important new from POBICS and from part of our big group, STS-b. 

For this reading, we will propose some of this points as key elements to discuss:

• The concept of Ban (Sovereign Ban)
• What is Homo Sacer?
• What are the difference between the biopolitical concept by Foucault and by Agamben?
• The state of exception and the present

In the first place, the ban is the key concept that allows to creating the notion of state of exception. Thus, the ban consists on stablish a relation with that is outside the relationship. In this vein, due to the ban, life can be linked to law thoughout an un-binding, including only by an exclusion. The state of exception in the current days, within the vision of Agamben can be seen practically in each action of our daily life: this zone of indifference and transit between life and zoè, nature and culture; has been imposed and widespread. The current preparedness and biosurveillance logic makes that our zoè emerge where we see a new about Ebola, when we think about vaccinate agains the flu, or when we interact with a new app that alerts us about where is a new outbreak.

The ban is an important and quite interesting concept because it allows to explain several event and situtations in some other fields. For instance, to our current researches, we can talk about the ban relationship between life and biosurveillance: life only would be understood within the exclusion stablished by protocols, laws and the biomedical knowledge. In this vein, the dog Excalibur (the dog that was given death due to the contact with her owner, Teresa Romero) cannot be seen as a murder, but as a bare (or sacred) life. 

About Homo Sacer, the central concept of the book, understood as the person that people have tried for a crime, but it is not lawful for sacrifice. But if someone would kill him, the latter would not be convicted of murder, is the "condition sine qua non" to understand the biopolitical project by Agamben. This concept is quite related with the concept of ban, and it lets us to "generalize" to other species this feature of give death without a punishment of law nor the bad vision of people. The Excalibur dog example is a good illustration about it. Here, we can also bring the thanatopolitics concept by Rose in order to understand better this "skip" from the ethical or political trial. 

Finally, the biopolitical project by Agamben points out that all of our contemporary  political moment is biopolitics: the politics has been substituted by biopolitics, understood as this attempt to reduce life to zoè. Furthermore, the biopolitics tries to make the shift from a state to the state of exception, a permanent situation where the normative law is suspended and the state of exception is become the rule. However, for Foucault, the biopolitics is an "older" concept in the sense that is not "refreshed" with the last events of this decades, and it is explained within the states and their births in the XIX Century. Foucault uses the biopolitics as a control tool, linked to the policy and statistics, and less to law and the classical law.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Thierry Ehrmann

Biovigilant citizenship. A new paper is coming!

A month and a half later, we are ending our paper about biovigilant citizenship. Although we wrote some points about it in March, now is when we are reviewing the result and so, we will have a new document ready to be send very soon. 

Finally, the paper brings a landscape where we gather the main theories about the classical citizenship: we begin with a brief abstract from Greece to the 20th Century, talking about the citizen condition and liking it to the main features in each time: classic right, marxism, liberalism...

In a second moment, we focus on these studies that works with new kinds of understand the citizen: Nikolas Rose, Aiwa Ong, Petryna... all of them link the citizen condition to the "bio" condition, each one within their current work (tissues and organs, catastrophes, biohazards...).

Then, we offer our particular vision bringing a new feature to the path opened by these lasts authors. In this vein, we present the biovigilant citizenship as those citizenship that is "invited" not only to be watched, but also being an active vigilant about any kind of biological risk (a new epidemics, an odd man that is bleeding in the street...).

To illustrate it, we work with some images anddocumentos by the WHO and we do a first analysis about HealthMap, an app for smartphones that allows anyone to alert and inform about new cases or biohazards; and also allows to watch if close to his home there is a reported virus or bacteria. Along the analysis we focus on the "paraskeue" or equipment concept given by Michel Foucault.

In the conclusions paragraph, we wide the conception of biovigilant citizenship and we also point out some points about further studies.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Sascha Kohlmann.

Empire seminary. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt reading

Today, we have held the first seminary of the biopolitics cycle we announced last week. 

In this first meeting, we have revised the main work by Negri and Hardt, Empire, at the basis of this index:

1. What is Empire?
2. About multitude concept
3. Biopolitics on Negri & Hardt vs Biopolitics on Foucault

In this vein, We bring today some questions, ideas and thinkings about the three points:

1) What is Empire?

It is an operation where inclusion, differentiation and administration from the state of emergency. This state of emergency manages differences, allows and power the existence of differences between us. This differeces are cultural differences and they are the only ones allowed to exist.

The Empire is inclusive, seeking include us within.

There is no territorial border, nor temporal border: Empire suspends history. There is nothing out of it: even the story is inside it.

2) About multitude concept:

Multitude is a sum, a transformation, where co-operation is given from a desire to live.

Multitude is a concept of political science and constitutional law which represents the social multiplicity of subjects who are able to act together as an agent of biopolitical production within the political system.

Multitude is also an operation, but an operation of co-operation, where many entities cooperate without refuse each one to its own idiosyncrasies (if they resign to this own particular features, then they have a shared identity and it would not a multitude).

His only thing in common is their ability to create. But creation that comes from many different places, with reviews and plural and diverse cultures.

The crowd may not be permanent, stable and universal characteristics. It changes ... noody does not know what to expect from her.

3) Biopolitics on Negri & Hardt vs Foucault:

Foucault links the biopolitical exercise to the state, and the state is for him the old nation-state. In Negri, the biopolitical exercise is linked to the Empire. The Empire is a deterritorialized and a large operation because it is everywhere but it is also in the small things of the daily life.

The biopolitics of Negri is global, with a full and global mobilization of life sciences, it is a knowledge about risk. The technologies used are the information. Biopolitics is a difference mangement (multitude).

In contrast, Foucault, biopolitics is machine body / body-species management and uses human and social sciences. Knowledge is a nomic knowledge that uses energy technologies, and where there is biopolitics-biopower transformation.

In Negri: Managing the difference.

In Foucault: Creating something.

The first Foucault: First power, then resistance.

Negri: Power relations grow on the multitude (this one is first than Empire), which is the creative capacity of people. Empire is one step behind the multitude and always tries to reach it. It may be that at the end the multitude overthrow to the Empire.

The black swan is possible for a host of creative acts, which are concatenated and they have a very visible (the fall of the Berlin Wall) effect, but others are not so visible.

Biopolitics in Negri is global.

Productive work has become increasingly less material (cognitive capitalism), and we have also to keep in mind the communicative dimension (big difference with Foucault).

The empire is corruption. It is the biopolitical exercise. The imperial operation is itself the biopolitical exercise. Empire and biopolitics have become the same dimension: is not that one use to the other, but they are the same thing. The Empire is the dispositif of the biopoltics.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Jef safi

New cycle of readings by POBICS!

Yesterday in our last meeting, we set a new cycle of readings for this spring at the success of our cycle of seminaries about Deleuze. Concretely, we have to split the cycle in 3 courses. They will be every week at Wednesday, 15:00 at the Martín Baró Classroom (Department of Social Psychology, Autonomous University of Barcelona), but there are some exceptions (like the first meeting in the next week, that will be Monday and not Wednesday, at 15:00). The courses are:

a) A biopopolitical review beyond Foucault: Empire, Homo Sacer and Ethopolitics.

b) Semiotics of the image: Visual Methodologies, and Cinema I & II.

c) Compilation about Gabriel Tarde. 

As we have said, the seminaries will begin next Monday with the reading of Empire, by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. You can consult the whole list here:

NEW WAYS OF BIOPOLITICS

- April 13th: Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

- April 22th: Homo Sacer by Giorgio Agamben

- May 6th: Policies of life. Biomedicine, power and subjectivity in the XXI century by Nikolas Rose

 

REGIMES OF IMAGES IN CONTEMPORARY

- May 13th: Visual Methodologies by Gillian Rose

- May 20th: Cinema I. Bergson and images by Gilles Deleuze

- May 25th: Cinema II. Signs of movement and time by Gilles Deleuze

THE END OF THE SOCIAL. GABRIEL EVENING READING

- June 3th: Monadology and sociology by Gabriel Tarde

- June 10th: Beliefs, desires, societies  byGabriel Tarde

- June 17th: The social laws by Gabriel Tarde

All the sessions are opened and are free. You can come wherever you want and only to those you are interested (if you cannot come to the complete cycle). You can invite and tell everyone that could be interested.

If you need more information, contact with us in this email:

portraitsbioscontemporary@gmail.com 

Thank you so much!

Photo Credit: By ourself, one of our last meetings.

An emerging concept: Planetary Boundaries

After a little break for ten years due to the easter's holidays, we are back in order to talk about a concept we have read few days ago. Furthermore, we announced it in the second last post, this is Planetary Boundaries.

But, what is Planetary Boundaries? According to Steffen, Richardson, Rockström, Cornell et al .(2015), planetary boundaries consists in: 

"The planetary boundaries (PB) approach aims to define a safe operating space for human societies to develop and thrive, based on our evolving understanding of the functioning and resilience of the Earth System"

As everyone can read in this kind of paper, PB is in the line of global researches and studies about human actions around the globe (as Global Health, for instance). The basic premise about PB is that currently, we have overstepped the Holocene time, and now, we are in the Anthropocene time. 

Anthropocene time is featured by the great impact of the human actions on the environment, and because of it, in the last 100-200 years we left the Holocene period; so starting from this assumption, humankind must ensure a sustainable development in the next decades in order to survive. For this, it has been scheduled some parameters considered "prioritaries" that we cannot break in a concrete measure: Chemical Pollution, Climate Crisis, Ocean Acidification, Ozone Depletion, Nitrogen Cycle, Phosporus Cycle, Freshwater Use, Deforestation and Others Land User Changes, Biodiversity Loss and Particle Pollution of the Atmosphere. 

According to this parameters, we must reduce rapidly the Climate Change, Biodiversity Loss, and Biogeochemical (Nitrogen Cycle) levels because we have already "crossed the boundary". PB also provides a "intermedium" level that might alert us we are on the point of cross the level of certain parameter. In order to measure this parameters, it is used some devices like early warning systems in order to pre-empt to the border's crossing. 

Our interest about this question is varied. How people can be aware and alert within the PB logic? Can PB obey to a global-surveillance system? and in this case, what are the political effects over citizenship? A new biopolitics? Could people being watched and, at the same time, be an active watcher??

References: 

 Steffen, W. Richardson, K. Rockström, J. Cornell, S. E. Fetzer, I. Bennet, E. M. Biggs, R. Carpenter, S, R. De Vries, W. De Wit, C. A. Folke, C. Gerten, D. Heinke, J. Mace, G. M. Persson, L M. Ramanathan, V. Reyers, B. Sörling, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user ILRI