September 23, 2008
CFP for AAG: ‘Securing the Future’
n.b. this probably is more of interest to readers of VSS but I seem to not have post privileges over there.
CFP: Securing the future: the role of space in impending crises
AAG Las Vegas, March 22-7, 2009
Please send abstracts to Bethan Evans (b.evans@mmu.ac.uk) by Friday 10th
October (deadline for registration with the AAG is 16th October)
There has been a noticeable shift in public policy across a range of sectors
from policy focussed on individual (or corporate) responsibility to a focus
on the ‘environment’ (imagined in various guises) as the cause of, and
potential solution to a range of social ills (e.g. obesity, drinking, crime,
terrorism, climate change, etc). Often focussed on (though not restricted
to) the ‘urban’, such policy uses a range of terms (space, environment,
context, etc.) to refer to the combination of spatial relations (social,
cultural, physical, political, economic etc.) deemed responsible for
impending crises. Similar to Foucault’s (2007) use of the term ‘Milieu’,
such ‘environments’ are seen as spaces of intervention and hence as spaces
of security as environments and populations are seen as mutually
constitutive (population understood as a multiplicity bound to the material
relations within which they live).
Thus, according to Foucault, using the example of the construction or
planning of towns as a form of social control, security can be
differentiated from discipline through its particular relationship with both
space and time: “Security will rely on a number of material givens. It
will, of course, work on site with the flows of water, islands, air and so
forth. Thus it works on a given…[which] will not be reconstructed to arrive
at a point of perfection, as in a disciplinary town. … The town will not
be conceived or planned according to a static perception, but will open onto
a future that is not exactly controllable. … The specific space of security
refers then to a series of possible events; it refers to the temporal and
the uncertain, which have to be inserted into a given space” (2007 p.19-20).
Across the social sciences a range of work has also noted a fundamental
shift in the orientation to the future within recent policy (to pre-emption
and anticipatory governance) and accordingly the adoption of a broad range
of techniques (futures methodologies, multi-level modelling, scenario
planning, etc.) to capture and control future spaces. Such policies and
subsequent interventions (e.g. healthy / green towns) involve a range of
assumptions about the relationships between bodies, spaces, technologies,
natures, etc. which require further investigation. This call is therefore
for papers which explore the spatial and temporal relationships of policies
which claim the ability to secure the future.
Reference: Foucault M (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at
the College de France 1977-78. Translated by Graham Burchell. Houndmills:
Palgrave Macmilan
Papers may address (but are not limited to) the following issues in relation
to such policy:
The temporalities (habit, predictions, everydaylife) and spatialities of security;
The relationship between bodies and spaces;
Methodologies for capturing future spaces;
The role of different populations in securing the future (age, gender, ethnicity, etc);
The construction of urban natures/cultures;
Sites of impending crisis / intervention (city centres, towns, suburbs, etc);
The role of the environment / urban as an ameliorative device;
The construction of impending crises as a result of ‘urban’ spaces / environments;
The role of technologies;
Temporal and spatial aspects of mobilities;
Situating policy within place and time – attempts to apply models of success
from other places;
The conflation of different ‘crises’;
Please send abstracts to Bethan Evans (b.evans@mmu.ac.uk) by Friday 10th
October (deadline for registration with the AAG is 16th October)
August 29, 2008
Latour and Foucault
We have been through this before, and I won’t open it up again. But having just written a review of Reassembling the Social – hopefully out soon in Contemporary Sociology – I thought the following was of interest.
As those who have read the book know, Reassembling is a very formal and methodological book. The key idea is that many social scientific concepts posit a reality behind and beyond observed phenomena; that they enable an unwarranted “acceleration” in analysis that does not, therefore, “pay the full price” for tracing associations. I thought, at the time of reading, that this was a pretty good phrase — “pay the full price.”
So lookie here in Birth of Biopolitics: In a discussion of “inflationary” critiques of the state (which he is criticizing), Foucault says the following: “The third factor, the third inflationary mechanism which seems to be characteristic of this type of analysis, is that it enables one to avoid paying the full price of reality and actuality inasmuch as, in the name of this dynamism of the state, something like a kinship or danger, something like the great fantasy of the paranoic and devouring state can always be found. To that extent, ultimately it hardly matters what one’s grasp of reality is or what profile of actuality reality presents. It is enough, through suspicion and, as Francois Ewald would say, ‘denunciation,’ to find something like the fantastical profile of the state and there is no longer any need to analyze actuality. The elision of actuality seems to me [to be] the third inflationary mechanism we find in this critique.”
I highly recommend this entire passage, which is found around pp. 187-189. It is a rippingly satisfying critique of much of what passes for critical theory today. Among other things, I would argue (and am trying to argue in something I am writing at the moment) that it is an implicit critique of Foucault’s own position at the end of Society Must Be Defended when he links biopolitics to the totalitarian experiences of the early 20th century. More on that soon, I hope.
June 1, 2008
Your Sunday Morning Foucault
I know, I’m a total sucker for this stuff, but just a few soaring lines (of both methodological and conceptual interest) from the newly released (in English) Birth of Biopolitics to remind ourselves (at least some of us) why we do this:
“If we want to analyze this absolutely fundamental phenomenon in the history of Western governmentality, this irruption of the market as a principle of veridication, we should simply establish the intelligibility of this process by describing some of the connections between the different phenomena I have just referred to. This would involve showing how it became possible – that is to say, not showing that it was necessary, which is a futile task anyway, nor showing that it is a possibility, one possibility in a determinate field of possibilities….Let’s say that what enables us to make reality intelligible is simply showing that it was possible; establishing the intelligibility of reality consists in showing its possibility. Speaking in general terms, let’s say that in this history of a jurisdictional and then veridictional market we have one of those innumerable intersections between jurisdiction and veridication that is undoubtedly a fundamental phenomenon in the history of the modern west.”
January 18, 2008
Nano is officially not organic
“Following the precautionary approach, in line with organic principles, the Soil Association has banned manufactured nanoparticles as ingredients under our organic standards. We are the first organisation in the world to take regulatory action against the use of nanoparticles to safeguard the public. This initiative goes to the core of the organic movement’s values of protecting human health.”
The Guardian: Soil Association bans nanomaterials from organic products
January 16, 2008
History of Present and Anthropology of Contemporary
Following up from many recent discussions I was hoping to take up again the relation between a history of the present and an anthropology of the contemporary. Let’s begin with a few recent texts from amongst ARC participants:
“In this position [of an anthropology of contemporary] the challenge is not to make the present seem contingent, but situating ourselves among contemporary blockages and opportunities the challenge is to reformulate these blockages and opportunities as problems so as to make available a range of possible solutions” (Rabinow/Bennett, “Diagnostic”, p.8).
“In a contemporary situation where so much is already identified as contingent, there may not necessarily be a problem- space static enough to render contingent through, for instance, genealogical work… In a history of the present, something became a problem and through contestation eventually a stable response was formed. The stabilization can be reworked and inquired into in order to find those problematic sites prior to the stabilized response and how those particular responses were possible and under what conditions. In a contemporary mode the aim is to render a space of practices into a problem-space.” (Stavrianakis, “Paraskeue”, pp. 1-2).
I would like to dig a little bit further into the differentiation being proposed here in order to better discern its precise value and relevance, because I am still not entirely clear as to what the import of the distinction is myself. My concern stems from the thought that a history of the present can usefully function to do the kind of work that an anthropology of the contemporary is being taken up for.
Let’s begin with the point about contingency. I regard genealogy, perhaps somewhat against the grain of the best current scholarship, as an attempt not only to show that certain present practices are contingent, but more primarily as an attempt to describe how our present practices have contingently developed. There is at least one crucial difference between demonstrating that x is contingent and inquiring into how x has contingently formed. The latter inquiry can provide amongst its yield the conceptual and practical materials which we would need to transform present situations. Proving that the present is contingent implies that the present can be changed. Showing how the present has been contingently formed gives us materials for reworking the present. I understand Foucault to have been working on the latter (how) more than on the former (that).
If this is a useful way of understanding genealogy (and if we take genealogy to be a paradigm of the history of the present), then I think genealogy indeed offers resources for an anthropology of the contemporary, and is perhaps even an exeemplification of it. Or perhaps not. If not, the question is why not? If the mode of the contemporary concerns the emergence in the present of the practices providing the objects and problematizations we are inquiring into, then perhaps the history of the present does concern the emergence over the course of the past of these practices. But it seems to me that as Foucault took up, for instance, prisons his inquiry was also in part an attempt to specify the contemporary blockages and difficulties which are rendering prisons problematic in the present. A problematization for Foucault faced two ways: it functioned as a clarification of certain historical problematics that had stabilized in the past but it also function as an intensification of these problematics insofar as they continue to be sites of contestation and elaboration in the present.
So a few questions: Is genealogy as I am reading it indeed useful for an inquiry into the contemporary? Is there something that genealogy forces which the mode of the contemporary need avoid? One important remaining difference which I can discern is this: a genealogy is oriented toward taking up present problematizations in terms of their temporal velocity and historical directionality whilst an anthropology of the contemporary can be satisfied to inquire into problematizations without concern for the historical terms of their emergence. The present is a temporal notion whilst, perhaps, the contemporary is not. What is at stake in this distinction, though? And is it a distinction which ought to be pressed very far? If so, what are the advantages of taking it seriously? And what do we lose by taking it too seriously?
October 12, 2007
Emergence, Problematization, Reconstruction
Friends, I am posting a very inspiring and thought provoking text Colin Koopman has generously provided. As I mentioned last time, he has joined our little concept work committe and I hope that he will contribute many more texts!
I’ve been tossing around a few questions about the concept of emergence as a name for objects of a form of inquiry that locates itself through problematization (Foucault) and reconstruction (Dewey). I’ll first stake a claim (which is entirely debatable in my opinion) in order to be able to put these questions more directly. I’m hoping the questions are relevant to some of the inquiries taking place under the banner of ARC, but I suppose part of the motivation behind my asking them is to find out if these are the right kinds of questions which you all think need answering just now.
Emergence as Problematization and Reconstruction. Inquiries into emergence are best formulated not as theories of why the phenomena under scrutiny had to happen, but rather as concepts or conceptualizations which enable us to grasp the theoretical and practical forms (equipment?) that have contingently emerged. Emergence, that is, is best grasped through inquiries which demonstrate not the necessity of that which emerges but inquiries which grasp both the contingency of the emergent and the particular contingent forms emerging as complex assemblages.
One way of inquiring into emergence in this register of contingency is by way of a form of inquiry which conceptualizes the problematizations and reconstructions (colloq., the problems and solutions) which together enable the temporal-historical emergence of practices (complexes? singularities? sites? hybrids? assemblages? objects? x?). According to this form of inquiry (which could be genealogical, anthropological, or otherwise in its general orientation), complexes of practices are grasped as emergent responses to problems. (This emergence is best grasped as spiral rather than linear in nature: problems give rise to solutions which in turn fuel larger problems which in turn motivate larger solutions, and so on: complexes emerge in the form of reciprocally-developing structures of problematization and reconstruction.)
The Questions:
1. In what ways is inquiry into the emergent (as it is specified above) dependent on whether or not the inquiry concerns complexes which have emerged in the distant past or recent past versus those which are only just beginning to emerge in the near future? Does problematization and reconstruction take on a different character or quality if the emergent object of inquiry has already taken shape, has only recently taken shape, or is only just beginning to shape up?
One preliminary shot at this question is that it does make a difference insofar as two slightly different forms of inquiry, and attendant concepts employed in the inquiries, are likely to be relevant. In the case of objects of inquiry which have already emerged, one is more likely to track problematizations and reconstructions which have already congealed, however contingently. But in the case of objects of inquiry which are only just now emerging or have only very recently assumed any sort of solidity, it seems that problematization and reconstruction could in principle make some definite contribution to the final shape of the emergent object under scrutiny. It is in this sense that to problematize or reconstruct a practice that is only just now under way is not to leave the practice as it is (i.e., to practice positivist philosophy in the sense still urged by the later Wittgenstein) but is rather to change that practice in the very process of grasping it. My sense is that both Dewey and Foucault (my theoretical sources for reconstruction and problematization respectively) liked to think that their own work was of this latter sort in making a definite contribution to the objects of their inquiry—whether or not this is in fact the case can be debated.
2. Is the relation between problematization and reconstruction adequately and correctly elaborated? Is the relation between these two conceptions of inquiry best formulated as two phases of the work of thought? Or would it be better instead to insist that problematization and reconstruction are two very similar conceptions of the same broad practice of inquiry, though articulated in different theoretical registers? I am inclined to think that problematization leads into reconstruction which in turn leads into further problematization, namely the view that these are best viewed as two different phases of inquiry which we can piece together if we wish. I am led to this view largely by the observation that in the theoretical sources for each of these concepts it is difficult to find a usable specification of the form of inquiry elaborated by the other concept—that is to say, it is difficult to find a usable elaboration of reconstruction in Foucault (helpful remarks in some late interviews and in “What is Enlightenment?” notwithstanding) just as it is difficult to find any sophisticated conception of problematization in Dewey (though he is clear that reconstructive inquiry always begins with an indeterminate and problematic situation).<>
3. If conceptions of problematization and reconstruction enable us to grasp emergence, then how should we understand these conceptions as functioning? Are they to be put forward as characterizations for the way that thought always works (a theory of inquiry, as it were)? Or should they rather be postulated as concepts which help us grasp emergence from some particular perspective which we have chosen to assume? If the latter, that is if problematization and reconstruction are conceptual tools, then it may help to specify what purpose these tools are being fashioned for and to specify what other sorts of intellectual tools these contrast to. What other forms of inquiry are possible? What do these other forms hope to achieve? What do problematization and reconstruction hope to achieve, particularly as concerns emergence, that other forms of inquiry are not suited for?
September 23, 2007
Foucault’s Concept of Singularity
First of all: Sorry for the delay, which has been due to the simple fact that SJ Collier and I were too busy with our everyday jobs. Colin Koopmnan has joined our little committee on concept work and hence in future the three of us will try to coordinate the blog.
In our last exchange we discussed how to best depict our kind of inquiry (I am still somehow inclined to say ethnography or fieldwork). My initial effort to do so was to distinguish our kind of inquiry from theory driven kinds of research. One marker I used was “singularity.” The term is intriguing – I guess – for many of us. It promises to capture an ethos of relating to things – of taking them up – that is constitutive of our kind of research in its focus on the concrete, on the particular story or phenomenon that is emerging.
And yet, what “singularity” actually means, what its connotations and implications are is not quite clear. One way to approach the problem is to ask how others – who are somehow associated with it – use the term, e.g., Foucault. Read more »
August 12, 2007
what kind of inquiry is conceptual inquiry?
Welcome to the CW Blog!
ARC has decided to intensify blog discussions about concept-work. Perhaps a good way to begin further explorations of concept work could be to discuss the difference between concept work and theory – between the kind of inquiry concept work is tailored for and the kind of inquiry that is driven by theoretical questions.
Last month I was invited to give a talk somewhere in Germany (formidable place, excellent research conditions, nice people). The aim was to make myself and my work known, to get in touch with German anthropology. I spent a couple of days there, presenting myself to various people (my talk was on the emergence of the global health movement but most of the time we talked about my dissertation, an anthropological analysis of the emergence of adult cerebral plasticity and the conceptual turbulences it caused in neurology). Read more »
August 10, 2007
WORKING PAPERS UPDATE
The Working Papers have been reformatted and reposted. New papers will be added soon.
Welcome to Concept Work
ARC is beginning a new project on concept work, which will be housed on blog software. Our hope is that it can function as a new kind of space for the production of collaborative work.
The Concept Work Blog will focus on how concept work fits in to a broader approach to inquiry that is being developed in ARC. To some extent, exchanges on this topic have taken place on existing blogs, particularly on the Biopower and the Contemporary blog, which has been the site of extensive exchanges on What is a problematization? and on Dewey and Latour. By creating a space specifically for concept work, and limiting posts to extended discussions, we aspire to produce a series of such substantial exchanges in a disciplined fashion, and to capture these in ARC’s exchange series located in the document repository.
In the initial phase, the blog will be edited and moderated by Tobias Rees, who will also propose the first series of topics.