Ativan over the counter, This is a not-completely-thought-through attempt to provoke continued conversation here. I'm in the middle of trying to finish a manuscript on Nanotechnology and Responsibility based on the work i've pursued amongst this group over the last few years. Among the concepts that has emerged for me that I cannot get rid of, Tennessee TN Tenn. , but cannot think without is novelty--including all its variations such as innovation, Ativan online cheap, creativity, the new and the fashionable. My attempt at reasoning through why this is important in my case is the following tagline/aphorism: "Making things new, Alaska AK , making things safe, Lowest price ativan, making a career." Unraveled, the phrase is intended to capture the way that my subjects transformed the problem of environmental and biological properties of nanomaterials (e.g. their "safety") into a kind of problem which other scientists and engineers experienced as novel, order ativan no rx. Novel enough to merit the kinds of accolades and approbation that supposedly drive scientists--it was an attempt not just to solve a problem, but to "make" their careers (at all levels, the grad students excitement about partcipation, the interdisciplinary invention of a new thing, and the classic senior scientists struggling for power and recognition for what they did), ativan over the counter.
But I am no longer sure what I mean by novelty. Wisconsin WI Wis. , At one level, this is not just about conventional novelty in science, which is often treated as an unproblematic feature of scientific research--rather, ativan pills, it is about the effort necessary to make something unrecognizable into something novel. Ativan online stores, It's not just one set of scientists that needs to see something as new, but an intersection or union of multiple sets. Safety was seen by most chemists, North Dakota ND , physicists, Massachusetts MA Mass. , engineers in nano as something downstream, an uninteresting test after the real action is over. Ativan over the counter, The story I tell is about making safety into something "novel" enough to transcend that image.
At another level, pharmacy ativan, however, Ativan pharmacy, novelty is so pervasive and so important today that nearly everything counts as something new. I've started to wonder whether it would be possible to find anyone in science who was in fact not interested in making something new, and if such a creature could ever survive, köpa billiga ativan. This rise to prominence of novelty as the supervalue of values renders it unstable, Cheap ativan without prescription, both as a feature of working science, and as a concept for understanding what is happening. Is novelty being decoupled from power, Maine ME Me. . Is it proliferating into a bureaucratic value like cleanliness or accuracy, ativan over the counter.
Finally, Kjøpe ativan, there is a philosophical angle to this concern. Concerning the cultural significance of nanotechnology (those conceptual interconnection of problems of Weberian fame), the question of novelty is in the background all the time, order ativan online. Weber's Tolstoyish question “how shall we live” is rendered problematic today because the way we live is changing, Cheapest ativan online, and quickly by most accounts, with the knowledge and things we create. Old answers don't apply, acheter ativan discount, new double binds arise, Cheap ativan no prescription, paradoxes and dangers and uncertainties which, even in the best of cases, seem unanswerable in classic philosophical terms, cheap ativan pills. Ativan over the counter, The twist is the contemporary concern (obsession even) with novelty: both within science and engineering and outside of it, novelty has become the single most important cultural feature of knowledge production in our world. More important than lastingness, New Mexico NM N.Mex. , more important than certainty, more important than utility even, the race for novelty absolutely structures and determines the lives of scientists and engineers, Maryland MD Md. , as well as those who observe them (journalists, Buy ativan, funders, regulators, anthropologists and philosophers), order ativan. If novelty has become so important, then it gives a twist to that classic philosophical question: how should we live now. And now. And.... now, ativan over the counter. Like that annoying mobile phone salesperson who says “Can you hear me now?” the question can be asked over and over again. How should we answer this question when things seem to be changing so fast and so constantly. According to what temporality should the problem of novelty be rendered conceptually solid.
So two questions: 1) what is the conceptual locus of this problem. Ativan over the counter, Are there other concepts (and/or texts) which form the horizon of the problem. 2) Is novelty as I've described it above, a problem that relates science and politics (or rationality and governmentality) in ways that need to be explored. Does novelty play as central a role in the security of vital systems or in the formation of police power as it does in the generation of scientific and engineering objects.
Update:: Okay maybe three, since I forgot to include the equally problematic concept of "emergence" and "emergent forms" which I do not think helps matters all that much. It shifts the problem away from the de novo creation of things to their recombination. This is useful as a first step, but I also think there is as much "emergence" out there (and as valued) as there is novelty.
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Chris,
Thanks for this very thoughtful intervention.
(1)Very little will get funded if it is not “new” and “solid”. So there is some kind of rhetoric of authority as well as entrepreneurship. Presumably Latour et al both embody and analyze important aspects of this combination.
(2) Even more than Weber, Heidegger and his sneering at research as busy work and rushing around (various essays but the Question Concerning Technology, I assume is the place to look).
(3) I sincerely doubt the claim that because of this entrepreneurial activity and self-understanding that everything is “new.” Especially unconvincing in the ethical and political domains. That there is a vast sea of ignorance is not the same as the tacit claim that the past is irrelevant.
(4) We have abandoned “emergence” as well.
(5) Once again we are talking more Bourdieu and less Latour.
let’s continue this….
Perhaps it functions neither as concept nor problem. If the word functions to justify funds then that is important. But what are the referent objects? Is it too simplistic to distinguish between changes in degree and changes in kind? With that distinction it is then possible to mark the problems and concepts appropriate to the changes produced by the sciences and technologies we are tracking.
Regarding the question, can you hear me now?, I am reminded of a question from the audience during Paul’s National Academies’ Keck talk. The question was whether the conceptual approach being taken was not general rather than specific to the novelty of syntheticbiology. The materials are specific but the point and the measure is meant to be more general, no news there for the folks who came together to form ARC originally.
It seems that to take any change up in a mode that poses the question of significance demands, in one way that you pay attention to the objects that are supposedly new, but that your measure of significance is not determined by those objects. In that sense I would argue that novelty should not function as the problem or concept but is the referent in relation to which they are formed.
My comments are moving in a particular direction. I hope you don’t mind!
Point I:
The question concerning the new has so many different layers. What I find interesting is less the new in the sense of trendy or of being relevant (that is largely a social function, no?). Rather, it is the idea of a philosophy of modernity. The condition of the possibility of the philosophy of modernity is that something emphatically new has happened which changed the world in an epochal way. Almost always the argument is that “our” time escapes the ways we have ordered the world so far in some substantial way (because of “new” dangers, because of “new” knowledge, because of “new” disillusionments, etc.).
All of these arguments – the endless “we have run out of ground” song – assume that in the past all there was, was firm ground. Thereby they introduces all kinds of great divides.
I always thought that we need to anthropologize this attitude – this form.
Point II:
But, of course, we anthropologists are also somehow modern, at least in ethos. Hence we are part of the problem. And this is a challenge.
So far the most promising way of dealing with this challenge has been, I think, Marking Time, which introduces a shift from “the new” to difference or motion (sort of the tentative culmination point of a trajectory that lead PR from the Anthropology of Modernity, to the Anthropology of Reason, to the Anthropology of the Contemporary).
The question, or so my reading of MT goes, is less the emphatically new (by which I mean new in the sense of the philosophy of history, which essentially has been a philosophy of modernity). Rather, the focus is on motion, on different dynamics. Such motion is introduced in an existing (already slightly moving) field by fairly mundane things (no deeper meaning). Say a new institution is founded (like the Gates Foundation) that introduces a different dynamic in an existing field (international health).
In a certain way I am inclined to think that one should avoid treating such changes as “ontological events.” Isn’t the phrase “historical ontology” a bit unfortunate? Is the world in its being really changing because we can know, modify, order things in a new way?
Example I: Is the brain really changing simply because we now know that new neurons are being born in the adult? Is the world really changing because nanotechnology is now around?
Nothing epochal here, we used to say! That also would imply a certain departure of the idea of epistemological ruptures.
Point III:
I am aware that the term assemblage is so ubiquitous that it is not of immediate analytical significance. And yet…the term is quite helpful when it comes to the task of anthropolozing “the new.” Whatever phenomenon one is interested in – it can almost always be described as an assemblage of various elements (some older, some younger, others most recent). Most often – or so I think – “the new” is little more than a mutation of such an assemblage of elements. Say a new element is added – new in the non-emphatic, non-history of philosophy sense – with the consequence that the form/design of the assemblage changes. Elements that were formerly central are becoming more marginal, elements that were marginal perhaps totally irrelevant – or super central, etc.
Example I: The current Global Health movement builds on many elements that have been around for a fairly long time. To just mention a few: Human rights, national public health programs, the WHO, the World Bank, NGOs, etc. And yet, the Gates Foundation – or The Global Fund – has arguable introduced a new dynamic in this field. Many of the formerly central institutions have become more marginal; others that were so marginal that they almost were invisible (philanthropy) are now central, etc.
Example II: The Gates Foundation, one could say, has assembled elements that were around for a long time but that have hitherto not really been connected to the world of humanitarianism – for example, molecular biomedicine, a R&D logic, managerial skills, etc.
So is Global Health new? The question seems rather meaningless. In any case, it is analytically not challenging because it is not subtle enough.
My comment became too monstrous to control, and spawned a new post instead… thanks for thinking about this with me.