January 29, 2007
Time Change: Pedagogy Cluster Meeting
Due to a scheduling problem, the Pedagogy cluster’s first meeting will have to be put back a week–to Wednesday, February 7th. Same Bat time (4:20pm), same Bat channel (311 Kroeber), same Bat agenda… (see the old post.)
Lakoff Talk @ UCSF: Wednesday 7th Feb
http://dahsm.medschool.ucsf.edu/seminarSeries/index.aspx
Thanks China for the heads up, as it conflicts with the proposed time for a general get together let’s find a different day to do it.
January 28, 2007
The Social
We have been working to specify the concept of “the social” in relationship to concepts such as biopolitics and vital systems. One approach has been to look at how various authors working in a Foucaultian tradition have used the term in recent work. What follows is a brief summary of Nikolas Rose’s discussion of the historical emergence of “the social” as a political and analytic category in his book, Powers of Freedom.
Rose’s approach is that of historical ontology - ie. looking at how the social came into being as an entity with its own positivity, in response to specific problems of government. Thus, for Rose the social is one distinctive way of problematizing collective life. And one that is now operating in relation to other ways of thinking about and intervening in collective life. Read more »
connectivity
Proposal to call a general get together to see what is going on with the lab. Wednesday 7th Feb 5pm.
Read more »
January 25, 2007
We are go…
Props to Chris for excellent work. All blogs are up. The main site is online. Collaborators: collaborate!
Life
In his chapter on The Right of Death and the Power over Life, Foucault argues that power is now situated and exercised at the level of life. However, there seems to be a certain ambiguity in Foucault’s use of the category of “life”. In his chapter, Foucault seems to mean by “life” primarily “human life”. Concepts such as “anatomo-politics of the human body” and “biopolitics of the population” as well as “the power to foster life and to disallow it to the point of death” all refer to human life.
Conversely, however, the force of biopower is clearly based on a certain disregard for the distinction between human life and other forms of life. Biopower implies the envisioning of human life primarily in terms of its vital aspects. It seems to be clear what this means for human life, and almost all work on biopower and biopolitics has focused on this and led to insights of fundamental importance. Assuming that the distinction between human life and other forms of life is more in question today than ever, we might ask: What does this mean for the concept of biopower?
My sense is that we need to focus on the other side of the equation. Hannah Landecker points into this direction when she writes: “Biological matter derived from human bodies is a subset of all the biological matter that is out there in the world – it is, in the logic of the life sciences, not endowed with any particularly special qualities other than the usual species variations. Thus the more we develop ways to use insects, the more we develop approaches to human materiality that are continuous with the way we use insects, and this goes for all kinds of obscure organisms: when we change insects, we change what it is to be biological.”
I remember a veterinarian who once told me that now with the increasing attention to zoonotic diseases veterinarian practice is increasingly seen as a contribution to public health. Animals have become ‘model organisms’ of a new sort.
Mapping what “life” means today in contrast to what “life” meant for nineteenth century biology seems key to me if we want to re-invent the concept of biopower.
January 24, 2007
Draft syllabus now available
The draft syllabus to be discussed for the Pedagogy meeting (Wednesday, January 31st at 4:20pm in 311 Kroeber) is now up and available. You can check it out either at the original blog post, or download it below
January 22, 2007
Take a look at “The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age”
It is the title of an online draft of a MacArthur Foundation Occasional Paper on Digital Media and Learning, posted by Cathy Davidson and David Theo Goldberg. They are requesting comments, but actually going a step farther by presenting it as the start of a piece of collaborative writing. I know them from the intensive seminar on new ways of think about and with technology that I took this summer though UCHRI. I think they are making a very genuine effort to think in new ways, and that what they are doing connects with what we are doing. Anyone can comment individually of course, or we could collaboratively draft some feedback if there’s group interest.
January 19, 2007
Labinar Pedagogy Cluster, Spring 2007
The Pedagogy cluster will meet several times this semester, and is open to all who would like to be a part.
The pedagogy cluster will address fundamental issues of how to teach the Anthropology of the Contemporary at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. This means trying to answer the following questions:
- What are the central concepts, issues and ideas students must be introduced to, at the various levels of anthropological training, in order to understand and contribute to what we are calling the “Anthropology of the Contemporary”?
- What readings, literature and/or other material and equipment can serve as the basis for this pedagogy?
- Whare the methods best suited to teaching the anthropology of the contemporary?
During the Spring 2007 semester, we will attemp to answer these questions by focusing on two concrete projects:
- Course development.
We will develop two undergraduate courses, each aimed at offering students a founation in contemporary anthropological problems. The first course will be Anthropology 3AC: Introduction to Cultural(?) Anthropology, a course directed towards first and second-year undergraduates (including non-majors). The second will be Anthropology 156B: Anthropology of the Contemporary, an upper-division undergraduate course aimed at giving advanced anthropology majors an understanding of the issues pertaining to an anthropology of the contemporary.
- Bibliography project
As an offshoot of the above project, we will begin to create an archive of useful pedagogical materials.
Writing Group Meeting, Thursday January 25th at 5pm
For those of us interested in getting together to discuss one
another’s texts, the first meeting will be on Thursday, January 25, at
Henry’s, 5-7pm. (Close to campus, the place seems reasonably quiet,
and has a wide range of beers on tap.) Kevin has agreed to present an
excerpt from his dissertation (see attached).
Everyone who takes part on this occasion is of course expected to have
read the text, but to get the discussion going, Amelia and Mattias will
prepare to talk for 10-15 minutes. We suggest the following structure:
(1) Introductory comments (by Amelia and Mattias); (2) a general
discussion about the text and responses from Kevin; and (3) a brief
evaluation of the meeting to improve its form. We should also decide
on a timeslot for subsequent labinar events this semester.
Chapter 3–The King’s Two Bodies: Hierarchy and Distance at the École Nationale de Police