February 13, 2007
Reproblematizing the Social
This is a request for collaboration and/or comments. I am currently working on a field statement about the practice of social assessment in the environmental research project I study- so about the concept of social assessment generally and how various literatures can be brought to bear on the topic. I am also attempting to describe/diagnose the problem space in which something called “the social” is scrutinized, remediated, and made necessary and legitimate in realms of scientific research. I follow the work of Strathern here, especially her critique of social assessment as task of the Canadian Commission on New Reproductive Technologies (”Robust Knowledges and Fragile Futures,” Global Assemblages, Ong and Collier Eds.), a task which activated a particular idea of Canadian society in order to legitimate and ground notions of preference which the Commission alread had. How do we, as scholars of the contemporary, diagnose such practices as the instrumental creation of social interlocutors? And how do we, in another Luhmannian move, diagnose Strathern’s own observations as having something important to do with our present? I am writing, but I don’t know yet if I am getting anywhere.
I would start by trying to triangulate your concern with social assessment with another “social”-related discussion going on between Lakoff, Collier, Rose & Caduff & Rabinow in relation to vital security (http://anthropos-lab.net/bpc/2007/01/the-social/#more-6)