Report about the first AIBR congress

On July 7 we attended the first international conference held by AIBR anthropology: "Human beings: cultures, origins and destiny." The congress was held in the Autonomous University of Madrid, in the town of Cantoblanco and there we could listen different professionals from several fields, in addition to anthropology.

Our group presented two papers: "How can we imagine the scenarios ?, Ebola epidemics." And "Biosafety and speed. Acceleration operators on the Ebola epidemics", both of them were well received by the audience .

In them, we try to reflect the work done during this year of research and also present our group.

It was amazing how these different disciplines (social psychology, sociology, anthropology) can reach woven between them, forming an holistic and hegemonic whole that  allows us to have a broader view of the social diversity.

The Congress attracted more than 800 people from different countries and more than 100 thematic panels. To POBICS it was a real pleasure to share place with different themes and research covering the social fabric and thus learn a lot thanks to the different views we could take both in the panels and in the debates or the contributions that members of Congress hade made about our presentations.

In this vein, we can highlight some of the tables in which we participate by our thematic affinity: Relevance of traditional medicine and cultural health care, Casada Patricia G. Garcia; Bankruptcy and paradoxes of medical-preventive speech in blood storage umbilical cord, P. Santoro; or the Participation in the definition of future health care of A. Toledo, for instance.

The experience was pleasant and the conference included an excellent organization and logistical assistance, carried out by AIBR during these days. they did not miss any detail, in addition to the friendliness of the volunteers, participants of Congress and the association itself. Furthermore, we enjoyed a welcome cocktail from a busy route through the capital. The finale took him to party in the landmark botanical garden at the Complutense University of Madrid.

This Congress has allowed to us to observe the displayed map of the rich plurality of human beings and of the various research groups working in other parts of the peninsula or abroad, entering a little more in the forms of "doing" and their respective points of view.

From POBICS, we want to thank to AIBR for the organization and for the opportunity given to us to be able to expose our work even without not being part of the anthropology strictly.

This post would not be complete without thanking the two congressmen who presented the panel with us: Ana Toledo for its revitalization on the table and Serena Triuzzi for the technological assistance.

We want to each of the speakers in the round of questions and their suggestions. We finished the course with the latter activity and a very good taste. We hope the next Congress eagerly look forward to presenting our new jobs. 

Until then, networks will help us to close the gap, to share our respective knowledge and keep in touch.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful 

citizens can change the world. 

Indeed, those are the only thing that ever has.

-M. Mead.-

Photo Credit: Pedro, the member of our staff that came to the Congress.

Bad news for our group! :( our application for the FPU's grant has been denied

After six and half months, the Ministry of Education has published the provisional lists of persons who has achieved this grant. Unfortunately, our candidate Enrique Baleriola is not in this list. For this reason, we want to publish the project we planned to deploy in case of getting it.

Title: 

Pandemics and Society. The new biorisk management in the European Union.

Introduction:

The history of the XXI century has begun with a deep development of biomedical knowledge and probably, the progress in this field will become the milestone that will mark the development of that century. The emergence of a Global Health, the increase of the mechanisms of detection and alert to the emergence of new infectious vectors, or the creation of new strategies to manage biohazards are some examples of such milestones.

More specifically, biohazards have become so important topic that various local, national and international institutions consider it one of their priorities. Thus, the World Health Organization has produced many documents and has created observatories to prevent the spread of infectious unknown vectors (WHO, 2008); the European Union has prepared various guidelines (EU, 2002); and they have also grown in importance the Centre for Disease Control of the United States and its European counterpart, the European Centre for Disease Control. Moreover, from some years, it has added to this interest the Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO, 2007), the World Trade Organization (WTO, 2008), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, 2000) or the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 2011). With regard to our country, we should mention that there are several organizations that intertwine with the above functions, such as ministries of the Spanish State (Foreign, Health, Home Office...) and hospitals and reference laboratories (Carlos III Hospital in Madrid and Hospital Clinic in Barcelona).

Along with the above policy initiatives, it has begun to generate an enormous techno-scientific knowledge focused on the management of the biohazard as HealthMap or other applications seeking to develop early warning systems in which citizens have a relevant importance or the grown investment in BigData research (see Nambiar, Sethi, Bhardwaj and Vargheese, 2013; Young, 2014) as a complementary data source to that provided by health centers.

This situation has meant that for several years in the social sciences arise some studies trying to elucidate the role to be played by citizen, that in most cases, is alien to the latest discoveries and the advancement of knowledge in these areas. In this sense we can mention the work of authors such as Rose and Novas (2003); Petryna (2004); or Barker (2010); The results are of great relevance to examine: a) how biomedical knowledge impacts on our society; b) how citizenship reappropriates and put into use such knowledge c) and how the recent development of biohazards transformed our surveillance systems and general security.

All previous studies reported that in today's knowledge societies can no longer sustain the idea that users, public or citizens have little or no say in relation to advances in biomedical matter given the complexity of the same. On the contrary, they say that you are born a whole political and scientific tradition which holds that techno-scientific knowledge recipients should participate in its development and implementation. Such is a value that strengthens both our own production democracies expert knowledge. And this citizen involvement in the production and implementation of knowledge in biohazard is defined by some as a new biohazard management strategy as opposed to the classical risk calculations performed epidemiologists.

In this new management biohazard especially it emphasizes the creation of fictional scenarios but with a very close relation to our reality as a basic tool of knowledge production (Collier, 2008; Lakoff 2008). For them, citizenship is a key player in the decision making and implementation of protocols. In our country, the lack of scientific studies in this area is remarkable although those contributions Tirado, Gomez and Rocamora, 2015; Tirado, Baleriola, Giordani and Torrejon, 2014 or Tirado, Baleriola Gomez, Giordani and Torrejon, 2014; and the  R & D project to which this work will be attached, entitled: "Health and technoscience.Citizen participation in the processes of social appropriation of knowledge and technological design "(CSO2014-59136-P). In all of them is examined how citizens participate in scientific and technical products in terms of biohazard. In this line of analysis this project is framed.

Objectives:

Our investigation begins with the following hypothesis: the social appropriation of expert knowledge and public participation are a democratic value. This knowledge can be enhanced by analyzing the mechanisms that establish parameters to describe the permanent interaction between laymen and experts. In that sense, we propose the following objective:

1. To analyze the dimensions involved in the social appropriation of expertise knowledge in the in biosafety and biohazard realm. That is, to examine the psychosocial, cultural and individual elements that can operate in that exercise.

And, in order to achieve this goal, we propose the following specific objectives:

1.1. Determining the choice of stakeholders involved in the development of protocols on biosafety.

1.2 Analyze biosafety protocols used in research laboratories, specialized health centers in contagion from infectious vectors and military units specialized in biological warfare.

1.3 Analyze how are used and implemented protocols on biosafety.

1.4 Analyze how to make and mean daily practices related to biological threats and risks.

1.5 Design and conduct a citizen panel in which experts and laymen share their views on the knowledge produced in the field of biohazard.

The choice of this target due to the following reasons:

a) First, it is an area of ​​great importance in our societies.

b) Secondly, it is a space that has not been developed in our country too many analysis on the social appropriation of knowledge and public participation.

c) Finally, it is an area in which the relationship between experts and lay people is particularly close, since biomedical knowledge (biohazard dimensions, etc.) is especially present in our daily lives.

The present research proposal and its objectives are suited to a brand of new research interest being carried out internationally about the social implications of scientific knowledge in biotechnology and biosafety and biohazard (See for example Canada, 2013; Dobson, Barker and Taylor, 2013; Samimian-Darash, 2011, 2009; Lakoff, 2009; Carduff, 2008; Lakoff and Collier, 2008; or Collier, Lakoff and Rabinow, 2004). Similarly, it conforms to the national strategy of research projects R & D in the sense that is marked in areas of basic concern such as: health, safety and social change. In addition, as mentioned, be framed in an R + D + I recently granted.

However, despite this context, there is not still research on the specific mechanisms used by laymen, especially in the field of health are examined, to appropriate expertise and to intervene and participate in the generation of new knowledge and technologies. Therefore, our research would be a new contribution to deepen in these aspects. The reasons why we have chosen the field of biohazard as concrete space within the field of health will allow us to examine both the mechanisms of social appropriation of expert knowledge and the elements that characterize the citizen participation in the production of it are as follows :

a) It is a space that has become particularly strength and relevance in the world of health (remember the recent outbreak of Ebola, news of N1H1, etc.).

b) It is an area that has not yet received much attention from the social sciences.

c) It forms a block of analysis that neither the rest of Europe nor our country have developed too many studies on the role that the expert-lay relationship can play in the development and implementation of its techno-scientific production.

Given the above, perform this task in research is important because many experts and international institutions like the WHO believe that the great problem of biohazard management today is how protocols are received by their users. Knowledge of infection, its spread, prevention, care, etc. usually it greeted with alarm by the non-expert citizen and often such reception leads to a misunderstanding of it as unnecessary situations of collective panic. Therefore, an examination of how the non-experts receive such knowledge and how they appropriate it would have an overall scientific impact and other more local and targeted. The first one would allow us to understand better the mechanisms involved in social appropriation of expert knowledge on the part of the laity and, the second one, will help to develop biosecurity protocols that would allow to overcome the problems mentioned above.

Photo Credit: Chris Ford

We come back with Early Warning Systems! New paper, new ideas

As we posted recently, in this month of July, we are writing three new papers and, in this case, we want to talk particularly about one of these three: Early Warning Systems (EWS), citizenship and surveillance.

Yes, we know. We have talked about it several times, but in this case we want not to ask some questions neither speculate about the issue. In fact, we want to show the index we have planned to this work:

1) Introduction:

We want to expose a brief history about EWS and to defend the idea we are rounded by this kind of apparatus. Furthermore, we affirm there are two kind of Early Warning System: the first one, a passive-system, older, where information is went only in one way; the second one, more recent with the feature that now, communication goes in two ways: from experts to lay people and viceversa.

2) What is a EWS?

Here, we will point out our particular definition about the term and introduce the social implications.

3) Social thinking and EWS:

We want to show a little state of the art in social sciences. In this senses, we think there is no material enough to show big ideas, but we want to analyse it and see what we find.

4) Methodology:

In this section, we will illustrate quickly our study case and we wil also defend the use of qualitative matherial in a social research about biosecurity, accounting for our documental, interview and ethnographical material.

5) From control to biomonitoring:

Here we expose our main idea: a shift from a system where control is the main strategy to manage people, to a new kind of surveillance-monitoring (we have to detail it yet) througout the 2.0 EWS.

6) Discussion-ending:

Finally, we will be point out three open-ideas:

a. The step from control to monitoring

b. How life participates in its own management

c. Movement from surveillance to observation (we will use some ideas given by Michel Serres)

P.S: In the line of this post, you can check this video. What do you think about it? 

Photo Credit: Xavier Donat