II International Anthropology AIBR Congress

Next September, AIBR will hold the second congress about Anthropology. POBICS was in the first one, and we will repeat this year (here a report about our first experience!). We offer more info. about their website: 

Building on the success of its first edition, the 2nd AIBR International Conference of Anthropology brings together anthropologists from different parts of the world under the theme "Identity: Bridges, Thresholds, and Barriers." Since the beginnings of our discipline, we have reflected upon the categories, the continuities and discontinuities of being human. Therefore, to what extent are we "inventing" identity? If we have traditionally drawn a line between identity and alterity, have these essential concepts become the discipline’s very barriers? At one level, thinking about who we are requires to discriminate, to define and to separate. At another level it requires to incorporate, to relate, to entangle. These are the vectors by which the idea of identity is "good to think" and to be thought about, to discuss, and to provoke the anthropological debate that we will engage in at this conference.

The second edition of this conference will be jointly organized by AIBR (Network of Iberoamerican Anthropologists), GRECS (Research Group on Control and Social Exclusion), and the Department of Cultural Anthropology and History of America and Africa in the University of Barcelona, during 6-9 September 2016 in the beautiful city of Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain).

The theme for this year welcomes a large number of proposals and anthropologists from all subfields of the discipline. The conference aims to create a space that combines traditional forms of dissemination of knowledge—papers, posters, keynote addresses—with a wide variety of formats to inspire discussion and debate—roundtables, documentary films, and book presentations. 

Photo Credit: AIBR webpage

New theoretical answers about scenario-planning

Along the past week, I asked in diverses forums about the question of scenario (you can check out my past posts about it here and here) but now, with concrete questions and trying to link it with the citizenship's collaborative role (as part of early warning systems). Here is the answers:

"In our practice, these scenario-driven exercises are primarily focused on finding out the strengths and weaknesses of both your team (manpower levels, training updates, etc.) and your infrastructure, equipment and supply chain (is the inventory current?, is the equipment working?, are the facilities available in an emergency?, etc). From these initial questions you can draft a simple, yet relevant scenario to test both an unforeseen outbreak as well as your current surveillance capabilities. Then you can start adding challenges to this. Realistic scenarios will start with "a day in the life" of your particular team in your facility, then something 'goes wrong' or "someone notices something out of the ordinary in his/her routine, but didn't make much of it..." that's how situations evolve from bad to worse to crises. Hope this helps."

 

Another and full answer; very insteresing and gathered in ResearchGate, say:

"I will address your questions one after the other in a new order.

Is it true that scenarios are based in imagination?

Scenario planning also implies scenario thinking or scenario analysis - so it can be implied that this is based on deep and critical thinking and imagination.

How does it work?

Well, this is how it works:

It begins with defining the objectives and scope of the pandemic

This is closely followed by defining the key drivers of the pandemic

This will be followed by the collation and analysis of relevant data. Such data include quantitative, qualitative and expert opinion, access the predictability and the impact of the key drivers and defining appropriate measures associated with the key drivers

Another stage involves developing scenario

Applying scenario

and finally refining scenario through updates

How is scenarios defined  by bio-experts?

Well, scenarios are defined by bio-experts by carefully analysing the different biological parameters and key drivers  that will be associated in predicting a pandemic.

What are the root of this concept in biosecurity and biosurveillance projects?

The significance of this concept(scenario analysis) in biosecurity and biosurveillance related project cannot be underestimated. It provides a predictive platform for scientists to know and understand ahead the major and minor impact a pandemic will have on a community or a society. 

It also helps scientists to incorporate essential bio-security measures to curb the negative impact of such pandemic.

I hope I have provided some answers to your questions."

A third expert tell us, in this sense:

"Scenarios are meant to project potential impacts (primary, secondary...) of potential threats/hazards at macro and micro (local) levels- e.g. impacts to families/communities/vulnerable people. To which practical response measures are formulated and serve as the basis for preparedness efforts (things that we have to organize today during normal times so that we can indeed effectively respond if called for). Thus, scenario-based planning can be used to test existing set of plans or to inform first stage planning. In this regard, while fiction and imagination will be applied, it must be out of experiences and good educated foresight and appreciating possibilities."

 Finally, an answer quite close to our goals:

"Scenario planning as a part of pandemic preparedness can be quite diverse, and much dependent upon who is involved, whether the scenario involves national or international cooperation, and what the ultimate goals are in terms of protecting national biosecurity, global spread, mitigation, etc.  Clearly scenario planning must involve some imagination since it is an event that has not yet happened; but it should be greatly informed by earlier situations that have occurred that may be similar.  A good example is that new pandemic influenza strategies incorporate lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, for which there is much recent data and analysis.  One thing that is rapidly changing the social aspects of potential pandemic emergence is the widespread use of social media, electronic communication, etc.  These things have changed radically even in the last 5 years since the H1N1 pandemic.  Social media can be very useful if properly used to communicate information and prevention and/or mitigation measures.  However, the ability of the public to discriminate between good information and erroneous information is very limited, and thus social media's widespread indiscriminate use can pose great threats to getting accurate information out and coordinating responses. For these reasons, social media must be a major part of today's scenario planning, and should be coordinated with adequate filters at all levels, from international partnerships to local community-based strategies."

To sum up all these proposals, we can say, about scenario-planning:

• The imaginational factor exists in scenario-planning, but also it's used information about past events (and this include traditional risk-management and statistics).
• Scenario-plannning is not used only in order to prepare against a threat, but also to know how is workin at present actions that are carrying out.
• The exchange in scales exists, that is to say, scenario-planning not only seeks to prepare or isolate a concrete or local outbreak, but also encompasses large-scale and total scales.
• The role of citizenship/population is important in order to manage affects, behaviors and (I guess) to enrole the as an active early warning system by including some equipment (in the Foucault sense). In few weeks, I will write a post about it because is the goal of a next paper.
• Scenario-planning is a source of information about a cocnrete situation. We need to "experience" the terror and the emergencie, not only imagine it or calculate it.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Angus Mcdiarmid

Scenario planning in biosurveillance projects

For the current post, I want to talk about one issue we have been discussing today in our research meeting. And this is about one element of the preparedness logic of government: the scenario planning.

The source of this topic is one document we have found in the CDC website where it is exposed a scenario about an hypothetical tuberculosis contagion inside the United States. Scenario-based exercise, in words of Lakoff (2007) is a technical operation inside prepardness logic of government, and consists:

In the quest to be prepared for the eventuality of thermonuclear war, Kahn

counseled, every possibility should be pursued. “With sufficient preparation,” he wrote,

“we actually will be able to survive and recuperate if deterrence fails.”23 Kahn invented a

method for “thinking about the unthinkable” that would make such planning possible:

scenario development. Scenarios served two purposes. One was to assist in designing

role-playing games in which decision-makers would enact the lead-up to war with the

Soviet Union. In the absence of the actual experience of a nuclear standoff, these

exercises provided officials and military planners with something close to the sense of

urgency such a crisis would bring. The second use of scenarios was to force both planners

and the public to seriously face the prospect of nuclear catastrophe as something that

must be planned for in detail.

Thus, we can see scenarios as the solution for one event that we cannot know neither when nor where will emerge, as a potential pandemics. For this, traditional risk-asessment is not useful because it cannot be controlled or foreseen at the basis of past events because its configuration is not ever seen before. What we need, then, for it managing? a pre-event preparation, based in imagination:

The general problem scenario planning addressed was how to approach an

unprecedented event. Scenarios were not predictions or forecasts, but opportunities for

exercising an agile response capability. They trained leaders to deal with the

unanticipated. “Imagination,”

Our reflection is about one previous step: how is defined scenarios by bio-experts? what are the root of this concept in biosecurity and biosurveillance projects? how does it works? it is true that scenarios are based in imagination?

References:

Lakoff, Andrew. (2007). Preparing for the Next Emergency. Public Culture 19(2)247–271.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Manuel M. Almeida

The role of citizenship as Early Warning Systems. Answers to this question.

Two post ago, I wrote about some topics we want to inquire in relation with our current research goal, that is, what would be the role of citizenship as Early Warning System, or, generally, in the biosurveillance realm. 

Through ResearchGate, two researches have contributed with their answers to this issue. Responses are quite interesting:

"Enrique,

Thanks for your excellent job of posing this question, and articulating many critical issues.  I will be following the discussion that I hope will ensue, and perhaps make some more comments of my own after seeing where the discussion goes.  It seems to me that this whole area has been inadequately defined and standardized.  I consider much of my work to be biosurveillance - looking for prevalence and distribution of pathogens in natural environments, primarily through the use of  sentinel organisms.  However, surveillance or biomonitoring (which term is best?) for vector  populations is also important.  I've attached a couple of relevant papers.  Best wishes, Bruce"

"Hi Enrique,

As you mentioned, the term ‚biosurveillance‘ is closely related to the term ‘bio-monitoring’, in which monitoring is less regular than one would expet it to be in a surveillance system. Originally, these terms were coined about 40 years ago, when environmental concerns grew because of the ever occurring industrial pollution. Standard books of the matter should give you an overview about the terms applied.

Are there tools where the citizen can contribute?

Usually, every citizen can forward his/her concern to the appropriate parties, the national or international bodies concerned with the issue. In the U.S. this is certainly the EPA.

A sentinel site is a reference site being used usually on a national base. Look at what the tropical docs say about sentinel sites for their research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Society_of_Travel_Medicine

wish you all the best with your endeavor,

good luck!"

In fact, I am very interested in the International Society of Travel Medicine work, as well as the kind of stuff that the Global Oubreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) is carrying out (I didn't know this site), and I am sure we can slide for this websites in order to know new things and to collect new material and documents. 

In any case, we need for information about it, so we hope you would like to help us with your point of view or source of information.

By our part, we are wondering if it is feasible that one role of citizenship within biosurveillance may be alert global institutions when he/she or a relative present unusual symptoms, uploading it to the web through a smartphone or pc; simply pressing a button... not only seeking help, but to act as a Early System for a potential outbreak for which is necessary take actions previously within the Preparedness logic of government.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User New York National Guard

Welcome to our webpage!

First, I want to thank everyone who yesterday participated in the question I posed in ResearchGate, I hope more people participate and help to enrich de discussion, I am sure your answers would like everybody, particularly to our research group. 

The post of today is about one issue we was talking the last week. Is about one project we had in mind since the last spring, but for several reasons, we cannot take it off till this week. This project is the construction of a webpage where we can upload our works, reflections, and thus, release our field of knowledge but everyone interested in it.

Although the website is still under construction, you can visit it here and take a look to the main sections and if you want, give us some feedback about it. His name is "Portraits of Bios in the 21th Century-POBI21" (the name is also provisional), and we want to build some forums of discussion about biosurveillance and anthropology, social implications of this realm of the science and technology...

Thumbnail of POBI21

Webpage is organized in six sections: home, about, team, documents, our researches and events. Home is only the greeting and the ways of contact with us (Facebook and Twitter will be available soon). About is the section where we present our aim and our theoretical framework. Then, in team, you can check our personal bios as well as log in to our Academia.edu profiles. The main section is documents, splitted in Publications (papers and other academic outcomes), Working Papers (what are we doing now) and Seminary Summaries (some abstracts about our open seminaries). Our researches is still under construction, but soon you will find the topics we are working and other stuff. Finally, in events, you will see the next congress, meetings, seminaries, etc. where you can find some about our work.

The website is also created in order to link other research groups interested in our topics, and to enlarge the contacts for a later collaborations with people of worldwide. 

We will be publish several events where we will participate (not necessarily organized by us) and the meetings with public assistance (as seminaries where we will read some papers or books). We will be refreshing this section periodically, so I recommend checking it regularly!

This is the webpage: Portraits of Bios in the 21th Century

Photo Credit: Personal photo

Epidemics and Biosurveillance - Some questions to answer

After the "break" of Christmas, my research group and me are collecting new material in order to publish news papers and a book named "Biopolitics and Biosecurity at the 21th Century", in partnership with a brazilian research group, head by Cleci Maraschin.

In order to do that, we have to clear up some questions that I want to share with all of you, and so, you can collaborate and we can build a discussion exchanging diverses points of view. Here are the questions:

• What is understood, exactly, by biosurveillance?

• What is understood, in terms of biosecurity and biosurveillance, by Early Warning Systems?

• From the point of view of biosurveillance, scientifics and experts, what is currently the role of citizenship? 

• There are tools, apps, guidelines, etc. whereby citizenship can collaborate or "enact" as alert system?

• Where can we find documentation about this kind of issues? 

• What  is a sentinel site or a sentinel web? and how it works?

• What is the role of Internet into this new intelligence related with detecting pandemics and acting before it occurs?

Finally, I want to share with you our webpage (still is under construction), where we will upload our materials and papers in order to shere it with all of you, thanks a lot!

Portraits of Bios in the 21th Century

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Temari 09

New virtual discussion: The use of Grounded Theory in qualitative research

In the current post I want to write about one new discussion emerged in ResearchGate (a social net where people with academic works can publish and share their papers and other kind of stuff and discuss whatever topic). The theme of this discussion is about the use of Grounded Theory and Case Study, their differences and utilities in qualitative research. 

As usually I have done, I offer here the transcription of the discussion, particularlly the central question and my answer, but you can consult the full discussion with several interesting answers here:

Key question:

"What's the difference between case study and grounded theory research? Does it make sense to use both?

Does one only use one research strategy or several? Is it possible/recommendable to use both GT and case study research for triangulation purposes? where is the difference??"

And my anwers was: 

"For me, Case Study and Grounded Theory are distint but compatible. That's to say, Case Study is the study of one phenomenon deeply, througout several ways (i.e) if you are studying gender discrimination, a case study is to gather empirical material from interviews, documents, ethnography... and thus, to know the gender discrimination.

About Grounded Theory, is a process of research "backwards" than usual, that's to say, tipically a research starts with an hipotesis and theories, and then you collect material in order to confirm (or not) this theories. Grounded theory works beginning from the data collect and ends with the theories, at the basis of the empirical data 

If you want, in my blog I have a post talking about Study Case and another way to "channel" the empirical material which differs from Grounded Theory, called "Thick Description", it can serve for your investigation better than Grounded Theory, I guess.

This is the link: http://ebaes.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/methodology-in-social-studies-of.html"

Although in my research group, we don't use Grounded Theory currently, is a very interesting methodology in order to "assemble" the discourse or the "product" of the empirical data' interpretation. I am sure if you read some answer in the discussion, you can make sense about his use. What do you think about Grounded Theory? Do you know any alternative to Grounded Theory or Study Case? Do you use this methodologies in different forms? You can join the discussion or we can talk here.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Sam Ladner

Second communications for the UAB Congress

In the last post I was talking about the congress where our crew are going to present two communications. I want to remember the Congress is titled Affection, Body and Politics and you can still register in order to assist as a hearer. In that post, I named one of the communications we are going to carry out, particularly the one I am the speaker related with a new conception of body different to the Foucaultian’ conception and intimately linked with the new outbreaks and pandemics.

Actualliy, Stephen Hawking advised it with his popular quote "For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk "

The current post is going to be about the second one communication we are going to release, this one will be presented by my mate and friend, Marco Maureira and, although the research line is the same as the last one, Marco will resume Focault to point out some ideas about body, bios, and technology.

In fact, this communication is called “We Always were Cyborg, re-thinking life/re-thinking corporeality”. I cannot facilitate slides as the last time I have done, but I want to try give some main ideas of this work:

Beginning with some quick and brief concepts of our most remotely anthropology, we want to problematize the idea that Cyborg, as we understand it in the daily life, is a mistaken conception. This is because the cyborg-body doesn’t begin at the middle of XX Century, when humankind invented computers, DNAs intervention, bionics, etc. but we always were cyborg is to say that techné, as Agamben or Haraway explains, was always with us, defining how and who we are.

Then, we will offer some points that support this theory, basing on anthropological studies and the Heiddegerian theories, understanding language as one of this technés that have allowed people along History to begin (in the Deleuzian sense) all of that we are currently.

Do we are truly evolving? and, in this case, there is some historical and taken-for-granted conceptions we have to change about it?

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Charis Tsevis

New Congress in February!

After few days disconnected due to an important task I carried out for the Open University of Catalonia, I come back to Anthropology of the Bios talking about the 2^nd Congress of Critical Social Psychology that will be held in Barcelona, from February 12^th to February 14^th. This congress is titled “Affect, Embodiment and Politics” (registration is still open for everyone), where my research group will expose two communications about our current line of research.

For this, the current post is about one of this communications, particularly the one I will espose, whose name is “The new Management of Biorisk and the Biopower’ shift: from the Institutionalized body to the Interspecie Body”. Although the communication will be in Spanish, you can check the Prezi’ slides I am going to use here

For this work, we will begin talking about the current situation of our society in several realms: technology, society, outbreaks… whose assemblage is so different from that pointed out by Foucault in the 80’s which he never could observer because his death. After this introduction we will present two new concepts: interspecies-body and cinepolitics (I wrote one post talking about cinepolitics). Both interspecies-body and cinepolitics are linked at the basis of this new techno-scientific panorama drawn in the first part, where when a new outbreak is emerged, management and surveillance are carried out over the movement of a plural or heterogeneous body made by the union of animals, bacteria, viruses and humans. Is so difficult cutting of the link between all of them, and is observed that peril or risk is no longer one animal (a sheep or a flock of sheep for instance) but the jump to the human or to a whole farm (cows, horses, pigs…).

The next step in our communication is to compare this conception with the Foucaultian view of body: let live-make die to make live-let die, and his conception of a close and finalized body, passing from institution (school, jail, madhouse…) to institution. To finish, we will show some examples extracted from several European documents, including images and some text (you can check it in the last slides.

What is your opinion about that? We need some people in order to discuss our research and enrich our empirical material. 

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Castgen

Two new papers published!

As I post about two weeks ago, we were notified two of our papers would be published. Today has been published the second one so the post of today is where I gather both in order to everyone can consult it:

The first is titled "Cosmopolítica y Biopolítica en los regímenes de bioseguridad en la Unión Europea" published in the Chilean review "Pléyade", here is the abstract:

"In the last decade the notion of biosecurity has become really relevant in Social

Sciences. These have showed that the concept implies a new approach about the

phenomenon of security. Nevertheless, in this paper we will argue that biosecurity

means something else: it is a completely reconceptualization of the very idea of bios.

On the basis of several documents and proposals of European Union plus some

interviews to experts in the topic, we will put forward that European Union regimes

of biosecurity are a problematization, in the sense established by Michel Foucault,

of life. That is, they open a space in that this enters in the play of truth and false.

Moreover, we will pose that this problematization supposes a particular exercise.

One in that it is shaped at the same time a cosmopolitical and biopolitical proposal.

That is to say, regimes of biosecurity produce a cosmos fold over the living that is a

project of management of life as well. We will argue that the main elements of both has

to do with a new conceptualitation of living as living-together, as something mobile,

threaten, disperse over several scales and trap in strictly structures of codification."

You can consult it here: http://www.caip.cl/wp-content/uploads/14-Tirado-et.-al..pdf

The second one is titled "Subjetividad y subjetivadores en las tecnologías de bioseguridad en la Unión Europea" and was published 10 days ago in the Brazilian review "Polis e Psique", which abstract is here:

This paper analyses the relation between biosecurity and subjectivity. For this, we don’t follow

the narrative and discursive approaches or the poststructuralism that insists in conceptualizing

subject as a fold of external elements. Instead, we resort to actor-network concepts. In

this vein, we put forward the concept of “subjectifiers”, an element that offers the possibility

of a connexion with a reflective effect, and the notion of “scene”, an element defined by having

an affect attached to it. We analyse a case study: technologies of biosecurity in European

Union. We pose that it is possible to describe three subjectifiers (living-together, detachment

and future projection) and a scene characterized by threat as key elements in order to understand

the relation between biosecurity and subjectivity. Panic or threat are not elements inside

our mind or out there. On the contrary, they are dispositions activated when we establish connexions

with the subjectifiers and scenes.

And you can also consult it here: http://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/PolisePsique/article/view/44868/pdf_26

I recommend not only to take a look to our papers, but check all of them because there are so interesting. In the Chilean review, you will find a monographic about cosmopolitics, whilts in the Brazilian review you will find a spacial number about subjectivity and other issues.

As always, I hope you like it and you can do some comments in order to connect us and share our knowledges!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year full of new researches for everyone!

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Dayna Bateman.

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

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.