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

Summer is coming! New papers and work till fall

After a little break, we are here again in order to expose some points about the work and the research lines we will deploy this summer:

In the first place, we have planned to write three new drafts in order to be sent this fall. Although the three ones have a "central core" around biosecurity, biorrisk and ebola, we have stablished three different topics:

• For the first one, we want to wide the idea we sent to Nómadas Journal, where we talked about State of Emergency, Scenarios, and a new kind of bio-injuction (in contrast to Agamben and his Homo Sacer). The main idea is to affirm we are in a new time where Scenarios in biosecurity (as a new step in the preparedness logic of government) are the place where bios is defined, neither by politics neither law; but by techno-scientific knowledge.
• In the second one, we want to make a deep study about some "apps" like HealthMap in order to gather information about a new kind of "Early Warning Systems 2.0". The main feature of this new technologies, is the possibility of reporting and alerting by a layperson when he or she watches a strange person bleeding in the street, or if a friend has odds symptoms after a trip around Africa. We also want to make an ethnography with this app and finally, to extract the main conclussions about how a new kind of biosurveillance is being shaped.
• About the third one, we want to explain the "acceleration operators" idea once and for all. This last paper is the less-consolidated, but we have wrote a scheme with the key hypothesis that ebola is a path to create/articulate different scales (it is multiscalar). Speed is the characteristic of this path, but not from the biological component but a semiotic-component material.

In the other hand, we are pending about the achievement of a FPU grant by the Spanish Government for one of our students, and we want to collaborate in the next year congress about Social Studies of the Science and Technology, that will be held in Barcelona. Furthermore, we the new fund about our project, we want to make some new interviews with epidemiologist and other experts in the bios. Finally, we also want to make some "gatherings" with experts and lay people in order to close the expert knowledge to the society.

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Steve Hanna

Last 2014-2015 POBICS seminary: "La Subjetivación", Gilles Deleuze, course about Michel Foucault

Today, we have finished our calendary of seminaries with the last Deleuze's book about Foucault: "La Subjetivación". Undoubtedly, this course has been very important to us due to the great set of concepts, arguments and claims given by Deleuze to understand Foucault's work, but also in order to think about some key concepts in Social Critical Psychology like Power, Subjectivity or another importants philosophic concepts from Kant or Heidegger. 

The two axes around we have talked has been these two-ones:

- What is the subjectivity? It is more than a fold, but what?

- If between power and knowledge there is a actual-virtual relationship, and the subjectivity is a third axis, which is not actual or virtual; then, what is it and what kind of relationship has with the other two ones?

So, we will present as normally we do, the main ideas we have pointed out:

What is properly Foucault, is the answer to the emptiness that causes questions about: what lies beyond the power? What is characteristic of Deleuze would be the explanation about the outside points and its origin in line outside.

Deleuze breaks with the widespread conception of what Foucault calls subjectivity: subjectivity is not knowing, nor is power; It comes from the diagram (power relations), but is independent of them: they are three different ontologies (Knowledge, Power and Subjectivity). But, what is subjectivity then? "The art of itself". Subjectivity comes from the Greek diagram, and then the fold occurs. But within the fold there are not things, no content: there is memory, the absolute memory. Greeks created the possibility that  individuals could be a totality in itself (absolute memory, Bergson's memory concept).

History is a succession of events, but the memory are the conditions to establish relationships between those events. We can have the whole data at the time, but we have all the conditions to establish relationships between these events, i.e, a logic that allows you to understand the History in a particular way, like the rest of the people of your age, you understand the things one way (for instance. 2 + 2 may be 4, and nothing else). This is the absolute memory Bergson.

Westerners have added to the memory of our times the truth (the truth of sexuality, the truth of knowledge ...). In our time we can not think without truth. Subjectivity therefore is not a set of content.

The time that Foucault gives tosubjectivity is much larger than the that one given to power or knowledge. This, restructure Power and Knowledge regarding Subjectivity: the outside line is here, do not look away because in the distance there is only diagrams: subjectivity is more basic than Knowledge and Power (subjectivity becomes autonomous from these two, and them try to catch subjectivity changing more often than this last one, and therefore , being subordinated to subjectivity, it is becomes central (although it not borns before the others one).

So, in this sense...

Knowledge: actual

Power: virtual

Subjectivity: memory

If the resistance points  are singularities or subjectivities, we can talk about micro-practices of subjectivity with the equipment-concept given by Foucault. It is the way given by Foucault in order to convert logos in ethos, as the ethos would be an individual micro-subjectivity.

To govern itself is disengaging from Power and from Knowledge: you become you in your own world.

In the fold the is the unthinkable of thinking: the unthinking are the conditions to think (the absolute memory, conditions, logic); not only the thought (that would be the contents).

Photo Credit: Flickr, user Brande Jackson.

Summary from our Gabriel Tarde's seminary

Today, we have held the second to last seminary on this 2014/2015 course. We have red two books about Gabriel Tarde, titled "Beliefs, Desires, Societies" and "Social Laws"; two of the basic manuals in order to understand the Tarde's work. We have highlighted two main concepts in their books: the microsociology, and the "public" concept. We also have commented the "Desire" and "Belief" concepts on this author.

Here is the key points and the summary:

• What is Belief in Tarde?
• What is Desire in Tarde?
• The "public" concept vs "multitude"
• Microsociology and ANT

For him, both Belief and Desire can be quantified. In his theory of value, which is based on the belief and desire, he tries to make science of the "individual", categorizing and quantifying the two powers of individuality, although in themselves are more artistic than scientific.

Thanks to Tarde, we can say that in the Social Sciences, it emerged a thing called Psychology, which comes from it the other ones as sociology, anthropology, and so on.

Latour owes much to Tarde. Latour says that to start thinking, it must be placed "in the middle" or center of anything. " Tarde, in this same sense he says: "the only way to clear up some sources of any material, is placed in media res". As the same Latour points out in the preface of the book, ANT is greatly influenced by Tarde's work in its view of whatever kind of sociology (not only human sociologies) as an association of several "micro" elements which constitute the macro-structure or the macro-actant.

How is introduced the novelty in Tarde?: throughout the "personal genius". The personal battle each one: every new idea arises in a private individual mind before the public. Individual is personal, but not singular. How does that monadic individual produces the novelty?

The "minimum measure" on Afternoon is the brain. The novelty comes from the individual, from the small, but is there creation and adaptation at intermediate levels (eg. The level of discourse introduces novelty in the set of discourses that is the next level), or is there creation only in the small level?

Tarde dares to break the distance between the micro / meso / macro. Instead, Moscovici said psychosocial facts by psychosocial facts, maintaining the distances between levels (contrary to Tarde and later, to ANT).

Multitude concept in Tarde and Negri: multitude is an emerging potential of a group. In Tarde, creative uniqueness is in the individual. The forces of beliefs and desires do not exist in Negri (nor other concepts). In this sense, public creation also introduces novelty.

Tarde also does the first attention to technology (before  ANT) through the press, the newspaper ... when he says that through technology is the only way possible to create public.

Desire and belief are the "Konatus" and the "Apetitus" from Leibniz: Belief is the expression of a desire, if you have a desire, belief moves you to do something. Both are inseparable. They are the basic forces within the individual. As we all have beliefs and desires, it is something that goes beyond the individual:

"At the bottom of the internal phenomena," says Tarde, "[There are] three elements, belief, desire and its point of application, the pure feeling." "The first two terms," ​​he continues, "are the constitutive and innate forms or forces of a subject; the molds where it receives the raw material of sensation", Thus, the trials and human actions are rooted in the beliefs and desires that each individual owns in his conscience".

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Eduardo Fonseca Arraes

Some notes about the Foucaultian course by Deleuze and our research' topic

After a little break due to a big load of work at the queue (three papers, a project for a grant by the Spanish Government, the final course' evaluation of our PhD students...) we come back to our blog. Today, we only want to point out some ideas about our big and successful seminary on this year: the course taught by Deleuze about the Foucault' work. We also want to remember we have pending the last session about this course the 15th june (the third book about this course is called "La Subjetivación").

In this vein, we want to purpose a brief panorama about this course linking it to our current research:

a) There is a new subjectivation in the "bios era", that is, in the contemporary West societies where biotechnology and bio-medicine are conquering each square of our current life? How is the fold of the outside-line in this time?

b) As Deleuze says, subjectivation needs, firstly, the forms of knowledge and the forces relations. Can we "break" (in the Deleuzian vocabulary) sentences and images in order to extract statements and visibilities? What is that "illuminated" and "said" in our current time under the light and the statable of the bios?

c) We affirm that images has a forgotten role in the contemporary social research, but we foster the role of images in (for instance) ebola epidemics or protocols from other outbreaks. Is it possible that images have taken a new primacy over statements in this time? (next post will be about the role of images in the contemporary psychology, one of the last papers we have been working these days).

d) Are we in a new diagram beyond the third "super-man" diagram? and in this case, what are the features of this fourth diagram?

e) How are the "conquests" from knowledge and power over the subjectivation to shape this last one? Or, in the Felix Guattari comments' sense: If we can allocate an identity to this subjectivation, what it has been the role of power and knowledge?

f) From the Felix Guattari's observation form the Foucault work: how is the new field of perception in the bios era? 

g) Finally, what are the differences between "desire" and subjectivation? we think this difference is important in order to clearify the work by Deleuze from the work by Foucault.

We will try to answer this questions this summer with a new theoretical paper where we want to gather our the ideas emerged in our seminaries. We will keep informing about it soon.

Photo Credit: Flickr, User Jef Safi