EQUIPMENT: CONCEPT WORK

Equipment (paraskeuē), though conceptual in design and formulation, is pragmatic in use. Equipment composed of truth claims, affects and ethical orientations has historically taken different forms. It enables practical responses to changing conditions brought about by specific problems, events and general reconfigurations. For an anthropology of the contemporary a key equipmental challenge consists in fashioning repertoires of concepts that facilitate the practice of inquiry.

Buy Ativan Online Cheap

Posted on July 22, 2010 by stavrianakis

Buy ativan online cheap, Does the practice of anthropology require someone to listen. The obvious answer is, ativan, Kentucky KY Ky. , yes, the anthropologist, buy ativan pills. Order ativan online cheap, The practice of anthropology has focused on observing others and their lives. It has focused on how to learn to hear others, cheap ativan overnight delivery. Order ativan online without prescription, But an equally important question: If an anthropologist works with people who ultimately are indifferent to the speech of the anthropologist what does this do to the practice of anthropology. Does an anthropologist need to be listened to, buy ativan online cheap.
This is perhaps a question more suited to government aides, köpa ativan, Ativan for sale, priests, Seelsorgers, order ativan without prescription, Cheap ativan tablets, or the like, where the relation is constructed around ‘advice’ such that object of intervention, billige ativan Apotheke, Pharmacie ativan bon marché, the patient, the minister or congregation, Ohio OH , Buy ativan online without prescription, through their subject position, need to be capable of listening, buy ativan overnight delivery. Ativan online kaufen, As Asad pointed out (in Clifford & Marcus, 1986), buy ativan no prescription, New York NY N.Y. , more often the relation goes the other way around. The task of anthropological translation was for a long time, Alabama AL Ala. , Kjøpe ativan online, perhaps still is, to turn something opaque, παραγγείλετε online ativan, Cheap generic ativan, the implicit practices and meanings of another, into authorized discourse: To listen and then speak or write to a third party, αγοράζουν online ativan, Utah UT , usually the 20 or so people in the audience of a panel discussion. Of course, ativan no prescription, then, this is the insertion point for a critique of anthropological authority, of the inequality of languages. Buy ativan online cheap, Asad, in the essay, leaves us with a good diagnosis of a problem, but little way out other than something akin to Weber’s ‘be honest about what science does and does not do and be careful about how it is done, if you really want to do it’. As Asad himself suggests, anthropology is not a practice of reform. But if this is true, what then is the setting in which anthropology can be heard. As a set of claims about people and their lives, including the life of the one doing the inquiry. It seems that if either side of the relation of inquiry is indifferent about this, then one enters into the task of translation with the ever present question of the flattening of all values even closer at hand.

And so a question; when you entered the field was it a concern as to who would be willing to listening, in addition to finding those whom you wanted to listen to. Perhaps this question is a little obvious. If it was a concern, or is a concern, in what did it consist as activity.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged listening | Leave a comment

Buy Ativan C.o.d.

Posted on May 16, 2010 by stavrianakis

Buy ativan c.o.d., Is it still important to compare. This seems an obvious question to pose to ARC both in individual projects and relations across projects, order ativan online. Ordering ativan without prescription, If so, what to compare and how, buy cheap ativan. Acheter ativan bon marché, If comparison used to be for the purpose of classifying general kinds, is that still the purpose, online ativan. Ativan without a prescription, For Radcliffe-Brown, and I’m thinking of his “A Natural Science of Society”, αγοράζουν φτηνά ativan, Buy ativan, the aim of anthropology is classification contributing to generalized knowledge of kinds of (social) structure. Significance under this method is generated by relations between, what he terms, ‘mathematical’ properties of a class which is made up of the “actual interconnections of spatio-temporal elements” in social systems, buy ativan c.o.d.. The classic example is taking a set of actual kinship systems and then abstracting out such that one has a class of mathematical relation which distill the essence of kinship (I believe Josh has actually seen the equation whilst a student at Oxford), Missouri MO Mo. . Buy ativan without prescription, Now, this impetus to compare as a device for getting at significance is still with us, Mississippi MS Miss. . Goedkope ativan apotheek, In many of the dyads, triads and labs in the constellation of ARC, ativan discount, Billig kaufen ativan, the use of charts as devices for seeing relations between things has been very useful. But is this really comparison, halvalla ativan apteekki. Buy ativan c.o.d., If the purpose behind the British social anthropological comparison of the 40s and 50s (and later I imagine) was to find regularity across diverse phenomena, these phenomena were fairly easy to isolate; nation, society, economy (whether global, or kula ring), tribe. Billig ativan apotek, One lesson from making charts seems to be the obvious; today, people are putting in a lot of analytic labour in just figuring out what the object of inquiry is, Illinois IL Ill. , Delaware DE Del. , in composing the object of inquiry. But then a question becomes; how to relate the object which was dependent on the act of object formation to something else, comprare ativan. φτηνές φαρμακείο ativan, Is it necessary to do so in order to get at significance. Is this done through comparison, buy ativan online legally. Order ativan no prescription, Or will significance be evident from the elements which were assembled. Price of ativan. Ordering ativan. Washington WA Wash. .

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Comparison, object formation | 5 Comments

Order Cheap Ativan Online

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Christopher Kelty

Order cheap ativan online, [I'm posting this anew, but it is in part a response to questions from Tobias and Anthony on the previous post.]

No sooner did I abandon this topic than I picked up Arendt's The Human Condition, wherein there is, in chapter 6, an all too brief reflection on novelty (of precisely that form of philosophy of modernity that Tobias articulates as the main domain of this activity). The chapter announces that the three great events that define the character of the modern world are America (its discovery), the Reformation (and counter-reformation) and the telescope of Galileo. At this point Arendt says:

"The names we connect with them, Galileo Galilei and Martin Luther and the great seafarers, explorers and adventurers in the age of discovery, buy ativan without prescription, still belong to the premodern world. Moreover, the strange pathos of novelty, the almost violent insistence of nearly all the great authors, Order ativan from canada, scientists and philosophers since the seventeenth century that they saw things never seen before, thought thoughts never thought before, can be found in none of them, not even in Galileo."

There follows a footnote on novelty, the emergence of the term scienza nuova, a reference to Alexandre Koyre and a bit on the work of Karl Jaspers (from whom Arendt borrows the term "pathos of novelty"), West Virginia WV W.Va. , specifically Japers' essay on Descartes. Her basic point seems to be that these great events that characterize modernity are not continuous with the past, but nor is it possible to say that they occurred because Luther or Galileo or the seafarers were seeking something new. Rather they were ensconced in their own conceptual scheme (to foreshadow the likes of Kuhn and Davidson) in which novelty was not so important, but out of which emerged a new scheme with novelty as its key value, order cheap ativan online. Nothing new about this, Nevada NV Nev. , as we say.

Now, on the one hand, this is undoubtedly reassuring, to see novelty explicitly marked out as a value which radically increased in stature with the rise of modernity, modern philosophy and science, Rhode Island RI R.I. , and around which we all turn with a faithfulness that we rarely question. On the other hand, it is a version of things that re-introduces an epochal break (a form of novelty about which we have been taught to be suspicious around here), and which Tobias very nicely articulated in his comment. Wyoming WY Wyo. , Surely novelty is not itself new, and from here we can have a rich, but ultimately fruitless discussion about modernity and the philosophy of history. Order cheap ativan online, So at this point I would echo Anthony's comment on the previous post that there is reason to be careful about the referent of novelty--no novelty as such, but always the novelty of some thing. Novelty always modifies a claim. However, this requires more clarification, where to buy ativan, so let me propose this distinction:

1) the question of novelty as a claim about something: is it new or not. Can one define a set of parameters (a mode of veridiction, even) that allow novelty to be claimed convincingly in some cases and not others. Does this claim vary with the kinds of objects in play: art, Colorado CO Colo. , scientific 'discoveries', corporate product design, fashion, political causes, etc.

2) the question of novelty as one value among others, and often the most important one: it is more important to be new than certain, true, effective, flourishy, just, human etc, order cheap ativan online. Or to refine this, Montana MT Mont. , all other values are subordinated to novelty: it may be more effective, more just, more certain than something else, but we should value it because this makes it new. Cheapest ativan prices, It strikes me that classical conservatism is the only stance that actively resists this version of novelty (i.e. "Just because something is new, doesn't mean it is better." See for example, "The Relentless Cult of Novelty" by Solzhenitsyn).

and related to this,

2a) the question of novelty as marker of priority, Koop korting ativan, and a kind of bureacratic mechanism for managing the distribution of credit, resources and accolades or in the case of fraud, accusations. Order cheap ativan online, Novelty-as-firstness.

It strikes me that we anthropologists of the contemporary can safely hold hands, Ordering ativan pills, sing "If I Had a Hammer" and reject (1), in favor of emergence, or non-epochal thinking, or of difference and motion. I think there is a path out of that kind of obsessive concern with the new (and I do think assemblage-apparatus-problematization a useful starting place for that).

However, ativan prescription, I think it is extremely difficult to reject (2) or (2a). We can be cynical about them; we can see them as a problem of "some kind of rhetoric of authority as well as entrepreneurship" (Paul's comment); we can probably tie it to the economic and financial imperatives that drive knowledge production today; we can tie (2a) to the "university-ification" of culture (not the corporatization of the university), or perhaps to the "responsibilization" of individuals who must now all represent themselves as entrepreneurs, scientists, Purchase ativan, each with something new to offer. In any case, I would argue that (2) and (2a) are forms of novelty-as-experience which are central to self-fashioning in the contemporary, order cheap ativan online. When there are perfectly recognizable reasons to do something--something that will enhance flourishing or justice or even certainty--and yet it is impossible to do so unless it can also be made new, preferably cutting edge, then this form of novelty (or whatever it is) is at work.

An interesting outcome of this distinction is that (2) and (2a) becomes a problem for (1). As novelty-as-value and the need for widespread priority-ranking comes to dominate the scale of values, ativan sale, when they become the primary route to advancement, funding, access to power especially in knowledge-production, but beyond it is well, Buy ativan online, then this means people begin to propose, and to accept, ever more claims and things as novel in the sense of (1).

Think, for instance, of the proliferation of journals in academia, acquistare online ativan. Order cheap ativan online, Combine a publish-or-perish imperative with a novelty-as-key-value, and the system will burst if people cannot find outlets which both allow them to publish and stamp it with a seal of approval ("Now with more novelty!"), and so the number of journals is growing at an exponential rate today. Obviously, a great deal that is published today (that vast sea of ignorance) is not new in absolute terms, but only new to some community of scholars that read that journal (Or in the worst case, only new in order to promote careers). For ativan online, Differentiation of knowledge production between a high-culture of novelty and a low-culture of novelty (or perhaps a Royal and a Minor domain of novelty) thus seems possible, so long as the two don't mingle. No longer does it seem so easy to denounce "pseudo-science" "bad science" or "alternative science" simply because there is an exponentially growing sea of grey areas between the royal science and the many minor sciences all around it.

So the claim that everything must be new is true only in the sense of (2) and (2a), not (1). It is clear, I think that everything cannot be new in the sense of (1), for whatever value of new, order cheap ativan online. Novelty presumes ranking and priority, billiga ativan apotek. But that doesn't stop everyone from claiming novelty, regardless of the absolute truth of the matter. It is a bit of a Monadology: everything is new to some person or group, from some perspective, Cheapest ativan in the world, each living in different logoi, or within various, partially overlapping modernities. Obviously the differentiating, de-massifying power of the internet is crucial to this dynamic. Order cheap ativan online, At the same time that a thousand journals flourish, the top 10 most-read and most cited journals begin to matter more than ever before.

Anthony asked: is it not possible to be attentive to changes in degree and changes in kind, buy ativan from canada. To which I would say with respect to (1), it is absolutely possible. This is afterall, bread and butter to scientists who read only Kuhn: puzzle solving is new in degree, Ativan pedido en línea, paradigms are new in kind. However, with respect to (2) or (2a), I think it much harder. Every infinitesimal change in degree is accorded the status of novelty, because that is so much more important than other values, order cheap ativan online. Or at least, one can increase funding, buy ativan cheap, prestige, attention only be claiming that a change is new, to which all other values are subordinated. It is new because it is better, Vermont VT Vt. , it is new because it is greener, it is new because it is more responsible, etc. What would a change in kind look like in terms of (2) or (2a).

Consider what Jaspers says of novelty:

In the days when philosophy was metaphysics, a thinker lived in an enduring whole, cheap ativan online without prescription. Content with the philosophia perrenis Order cheap ativan online, in which he believed, he did not distinguish between the old and the new in his thoughts, for all of them were rooted in the whole. He judged ideas not by their novelty but by their authenticity. (Essay on Descartes, p. 132)

The characteristic feature of modern science therefore (and Jaspers excludes philosophy from this search for novelty, Descartes' New Method notwithstanding) is the image of rungs in an endless ladder. But what I think we see today is the endless proliferation of ladders, many of which cannot identify the ground they stand on, much less what they climb towards. Novelty, and the progress that is its justification, looks more like book-keeping from this perspective.

One last thing, Tobias' example of plasticity of the brain and its neurons is a lively one. In that same last section of the Human Condition, Arendt goes on at length (in unashamedly epochal terms) about the way Descartes' philosophy moved the Archimedean point from a place outside ourselves, even outside the earth, to the inside of our heads: "What men now have in common is not the world but the structure of their minds, and this they cannot have in common strictly speaking (283)" Neuroscience would be the apotheosis of this movement, and plasticity the introduction of doubt into the very claim that we have in minds in common.... all we have now are computers in common, and just barely that.

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Ativan Over The Counter

Posted on September 3, 2009 by Christopher Kelty

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.

Posted in concept, novelty, technology, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Buy Ativan

Posted on August 9, 2009 by scollier

Buy ativan, Over the past few years Andy and I have been trying to find appropriate terms to describe a distinctive diagram of power that is concerned with the vulnerability of transportation and energy infrastructures, public health apparatuses, and webs of industrial production, to unpredictable and potentially catastrophic events. The diagram draws together diverse techniques and practices, such as vulnerability assessment, simulation, cataloguing of resources, enactment, Ostaa halvalla ativan, and preparedness planning, according to a normative rationality or strategic logic. We have provisionally used the term “vital systems” to refer to the central object of knowledge and target of intervention of this diagram of power. We see this diagram as distinct from – but related to – the problematic of the “population” central to apparatuses of security that Foucault described in Security, Territory, Population. The term “vital” is valuable in pointing to this relation, Acheter en ligne ativan, but our use needs further elaboration. It is frequently used by first-order observers in the domains we are examining, but is slippery: laden with associations both wanted and unwanted, buy ativan. So, in the interest of advancing conceptual work on the vital I wanted to open a discussion by: first, indicating how the observers in the fields we have been examining use it; second, outlining potential problems it raises; third, Cheap ativan online, through reference to Sloterdijk’s use of the concept of “the vital” in Terror from the Air on which Paul has posted recently (here, here, and here), pointing to a possible “mutation of the vital” that accompanies the emergence of the diagram of power we are describing.

Read more after the jump.

What is the “vital” in “vital systems”?

The reference to collections of heterogeneous elements such as webs of industrial production and transport and information infrastructures as “vital systems” can be traced back to the rise of total war, and specifically to the articulation of strategic bombing theory by military planners during and then after World War I, købe ativan online. In strategic bombing theory, we see a new understanding of economic and social life: as a collection of vulnerable “vital” systems that could be made the target of attack. Buy ativan, The Italian air war theorist Douhet, thus, argued that air war should no longer focus on military equipment or the bodies of soldiers. Instead, it should focus on “the most vital, most vulnerable, Ordering ativan online cheap, and least protected points of the enemy’s territory” – systems of industrial production, food supply, and so on, upon which all aspects of a war effort depended. Strategic bombing was elaborated in the U.S. during the interwar period. Key figures in the U.S, Osta ativan online. Air Corps Tactical School sought to identify the targets that were crucial to a war effort, in particular through the theory of the “industrial web.” Air force officer Donald Wilson, a key proponent of this theory, wrote in 1938 that the modern economy was composed of “interrelated and entirely interdependent elements,” and that by attacking these “essential arteries,” or “organic essentials” of a society and economy it would be possible for a strategic bombing campaign to paralyze an enemy war effort (quoted in Faber 1997: 218, 219), buy ativan. It is evident – and I will return to this point – that Wilson was drawing on a prevalent contemporary understanding of the collectivity as a kind of organism, referring to infrastructures as the key elements that made the polity’s “life” possible. Industrial web theorists also articulated a new understanding of the United States as a collection of such vulnerable systems, noting that an enemy could easily attack “any targets of their choice in the vital industrial heart of our country (ibid: 194).

In the ensuing years, Florida FL Fla. , the term “vital” continues to appear in a diversity of contexts that Andy and I have described in our article on “The Vulnerability of Vital Systems.” From civil defense and mobilization planning in the 1950s, to articulations of “total preparedness” in the 1960 and 1970s, to more recent discussions of concepts such as critical infrastructure protection, the “vital” designates infrastructures, production systems, and so on, that are critical to collective security and wellbeing, buy cheap ativan online. A 1973 review of the work of the Office of Emergency Preparedness during the Nixon administration, thus, argued that “Along with readiness to meet any external threats to our national security, we must be continuously prepared to deal with internal problems that vitally affect our welfare and strength as a nation – natural disasters, fuel and energy shortages, Bestill ativan online, spiraling inflation of wages and prices, and disruptions of transportation and other vital public services” (New Dimensions of Civil Emergency Preparedness: 1969 – 1973). Buy ativan, In 1985, James Woolsey and Robert Kupperman wrote of events that could disable “networks crucial to life support, economic stability, and national defense.” (Woolsey and Kupperman 1985) And Critical Foundations, a 1997 Presidential report that laid out the basic principles of critical infrastructure protection argued that “Reliable and secure infrastructures are … the foundation for creating the wealth of our nation and our quality of life as a people,” noting that “certain of our infrastructures are so vital that their incapacity or destruction would have a debilitating impact on our defense and economic security” (Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection 1997: 3).

Hesitations

Thus, we see that reference to the “vital” can be found in a range of texts and contexts that we have been examining to indicate certain systems of production, communication, transportation, and so on, ordering ativan no rx, and a certain set of problems that have emerged historically in relation to these objects, concerning their vulnerability to catastrophic disruption, their criticality, etc. A question that immediately emerges is: how does this usage relate to other and perhaps more familiar reference domains of the word “vital”. Billige ativan apotek, What parts of those other meanings does it carry along with it. Etymologically, “vital” obviously relates to that which is connected to life. The word generally refers to that which is essential to life, buy ativan. In many early usages (in the 15^th or 16^th centuries) “vital” is not associated with what we now understand as the biological; indeed, it often refers to the spirit and is specifically opposed to mortal flesh. It was then attached to biological life, although with some variation of meaning and reference (thus the somewhat contrasting implications of, purchase ativan online, on the one hand, “vital organs” or “vital statistics,” referring, respectively, to the individual body and the population as biological entities, Acheter ativan, and, on the other hand, “vitalism” – which retains some of the spiritual reference of earlier usage).

So how was this word that first referred to the animating spirit and then came to refer to biology and to biological organisms subsequently used to describe electricity grids, industrial enterprises, or road networks. An obvious answer has to do with the 19^th and early 20^th century extension of organismic metaphors to new understandings of “society” as a single totality that was like an organism in that it had certain vital functions, Oklahoma OK Okla. , susceptibility to disease, certain predictable norms and patterns of pathology, and so on. Buy ativan, As is well known, this metaphor was widespread in projects ranging from social welfare to nationalism to eugenics to economic development. When we find reference to the “vital” in the theorists of strategic bombing, it is, Pennsylvania PA Penn. , in part, such organismic metaphors that they have in mind – thus Donald Wilson’s reference to “essential arteries” and “organic essentials.” So here would seem to be arguments against using the word “vital” to describe what we are trying to designate: it is associated with a now-discredited extension of organismic metaphors to describe collective life, one that was often linked to rather nefarious projects; it is primarily associated with first spiritual and then biological definitions of life.

That said, I continue to find reference to the word vital quite rich and suggestive, and to suggest a set of connections – both conceptual and genealogical – that are not suggested by other obvious terms that also show up in first-order discourse such as “critical” or “essential.” Here, very briefly, buy ativan no rx, are a few reasons why.

First, the organismic reference is not the only one relevant to our first-order actors. There has been and continues to be a very widespread use of the “vital” in military contexts, which simply refers to issues that are strategically as opposed to tactically important, Osta ativan, and it was this military usage that, from strategic bombing to civil defense, was transferred to the description of the domestic economy in the context of total war. I wrote a blog post about this a couple years back when reading Churchill on civil defense during the Battle of Britain, buy ativan. There, he wrote of the “many thousands of ‘vulnerable points’ — bridges, power-stations, depots, order ativan cod, vital factories, and the like” that “had to be guarded day and night from sabotage or sudden onset.” For many of our “first order actors” this military reference domain is of central importance. Given the role of military developments in our story, “vital” nicely points to a crucial line of genealogical development.

Second, if organismic metaphors are explicit in the early theorists of strategic bombing, Oregon OR Ore. , then they are markedly absent in more recent discussions. Thus, the clear implication of the Presidential report on critical infrastructures, cited above, is that these infrastructures are essential to life, but there is no hint of concern with the idea that the totality they comprise is “like” an organism in any way. In this sense, ordering ativan online legally, if it is still “life” that is in question, it is individual life, a collection of living individuals, not the “life” of a collective in some mystical sense. Buy ativan, In this sense, rather than muddying our account by reference to an unacknowledged organicism, tracing the treatment of “vital systems” might show us how a problematic initially understood in terms of organismic metaphors was loosed from these metaphors and from the political projects with which they were associated. Certainly, Köpa rabatterade ativan, as Andy and I showed in our article on “Distributed Preparedness,” this is crucial to the American story, where the emergence of a concern with the vulnerability of vital systems after World War II was linked to efforts to construct a model of the modern state that did not involve the “collectivism” of European or Soviet socialist variants. The problematic was: how could one protect the vital systems upon which life depends while preserving the traditions of individualism, local autonomy, and free enterprises that, for contemporaries, order ativan c.o.d., were key to the American political system?

That said – and this is a third point – despite discomfort with an organismic metaphor for describing the totality of collective life, it seems that there is something valuable about this reference to the historical scene in which these metaphors emerged. Organismic metaphors were, again, linked to a whole series of projects – social welfare, Jotta ativan verkossa, eugenics, and total war – in which “life” came to be understood not only in relationship to individual biology but to the entire series of relationships that constitute the social milieu, and that themselves became the objects of new kinds of knowledge and intervention. In this sense, the “vital” here indicates a more general relationship of our story to the history of biopolitics, through which, following Foucault, Arizona AZ Ariz. , life and population became problems of government. Thus, in tracing out the changing reference of this term – from strategic bombing to civil defense and domestic preparedness for nuclear attack to a broader concern with preparedness for various kinds of future catastrophe – we might also be tracing a modulation of the vital, from something conceived as a biological organism in a natural environment to something that is necessarily linked to the socio-technical milieu of modern life.

Mutations of “Vital” – A Note on Sloterdijk

This modulation might be suggested in a very preliminary way by reading our claims about vital systems in relationship to Sloterdijk’s observations about the vital in Terror from the Air, buy ativan. Very briefly, Sloterdijk locates a critical moment of contemporary history in the emergence of chemical war during World War I. The distinctive feature of chemical war, he observes, Kjøpe billig ativan, is the “displacement of destructive action from the ‘system’ (here: the enemy’s body) onto his ‘environment’” (22). In attacking the environment, chemical war aims to disrupt “the enemy’s primary, ecologically dependent vital functions” by which he means the strictly biological problems of “respiration, central nervous regulation, and sustainable temperature and radiation conditions” (16). He is thus tracing the emergence of an “expanded zone of warfare” in which “the enemy became an object in the environment whose removal was vital to the system’s survival” (27). Buy ativan, Here we find a number of intriguing convergences as well as some striking distinctions with our work. The most obvious convergence is Sloterdijk’s observation concerning a shift from attack on the enemy’s body – the “system” – to the “environment” that is “vital” to life. As noted above, we have observed a parallel shift in strategic bombing theory from attacks on troops and military equipment to the “vital systems” of food supply, industrial production, and infrastructures that are essential to a total military effort, not least because the lives of troops depend on them. The striking difference is in how this “environment” is conceptualized in each case. Sloterdijk, it seems, has a naturalistic conception of the environment. It is the previously un-reflected upon (and, he seems to imply, rather implausibly, previously pure) air that surrounds us, buy ativan. But in our genealogical work, we have found that the environment that is increasingly “explicated” – and that becomes the target of military attack – during the 20^th century is comprised of a vast array of other systems: that is, self-consciously constituted, interdependent infrastructures and production facilities upon which life, in modern societies, depends. In this sense, it might be possible to write Sloterkijk’s history into the more general history of forms of knowledge and modalities of intervention concerned with the vulnerability of vital systems – both as objects of attack and as objects of protection or security.

Questions on Concept Work

In light of all this, here are a few questions that might be valuable to discuss: Are these associations of the vital with an organismic metaphor for collective life disqualifying. Or are they valuable in pointing to important lines of genealogical development and mutations of the vital. How does the identification of first-order concepts in a genealogical series relate to their use in an anthropology of the contemporary. How does this use of “vital” or “vital systems” compare to familiar concepts such as Foucault’s “population,” which was the object of apparatuses of “security”.

Posted in concept work, Security, vital | 26 Comments

Order Ativan No Prescription

Posted on August 9, 2009 by scollier

Order ativan no prescription, After some discussions in Berkeley, Paul, Gaymon and I have agreed that the time is right to try to reinvigorate concept work on this blog (whose named has been changed accordingly). Order ativan online legally, Those who have been associated with ARC for some time know that it has long been our goal to make more explicit and assign credit for kinds of intellectual work that do not fall into the usual genres of production for journal articles and books. Among these, generic ativan, αγοράσετε ativan, work on concepts is crucial, since concept development is both the precondition and the outcome of successful inquiry, cheap ativan online cheap. Indiana IN Ind. , We will proceed by choosing selected concepts that have emerged out of our current projects on topics such as domestic preparedness in the United States, synthetic biology, order ativan overnight delivery, αγοράσετε ativan έκπτωση, ethics, and so on, Kjøp Discount ativan. California CA Calif. , We are particularly interested in the way that concepts emerge from a certain field of inquiry, in the work that is done to formulate them, ordering ativan online, Buy ativan online cheap, and in the way that they are then extended to have more general meaning and use. We will try to maintain a regular schedule of posting – about one per month – that we hope will spur serious exchange and critical discussion, and that will aim to improve our collective work on and use of concepts, order ativan no prescription. Each post will be associated with a text that is of general interest (in other words, Virginia VA Va. , North Carolina NC N.C. , one that is not necessarily tied to a given topic of inquiry). If the exchanges prove fruitful, District of Columbia DC D.C. , För ativan online, we will turn them into more stable documents that can be transferred to the appropriate area of the web site.

The initial post will be on a concept that Andy and I have been thinking about in our work on domestic preparedness in the United States: the "vital" in "vital systems." In about a month Paul Rabinow and Gaymon Bennett will post on “political spirituality.” Although we have ideas for a number of posts after that, ativan prices, Georgia GA Ga. , we invite your suggestions on future directions.

We thank you, ativan cheap, Rabatt kaufen ativan, in advance, for your participation in this new initiative, comprar ativan baratos. Om ativan online. Comprare ativan sconto. Osta alennus ativan. Comprar ativan. Ativan over the counter.

Posted in collaboration, concept work, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Order Ativan Online Cheap

Posted on September 23, 2008 by cwkoopman

Order ativan online cheap, 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, acquistare a buon mercato ativan, 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 â€˜environmentâ€™ (imagined in various guises) as the cause of, Ativan online, and
potential solution to a range of social ills (e.g. obesity, drinking, Idaho ID , crime, Minnesota MN Minn. , terrorism, climate change, etc), köpa ativan online. Often focussed on (though not restricted
to) the â€˜urbanâ€™, Ordering ativan online without prescription, such policy uses a range of terms (space, environment,
context, Arkansas AR Ark. , etc.) to refer to the combination of spatial relations (social, Ordering ativan overnight delivery, cultural, physical, political, cheap ativan online, economic etc.) deemed responsible for
impending crises. Buy ativan online, Similar to Foucaultâ€™s (2007) use of the term â€˜Milieuâ€™,
such â€˜environmentsâ€™ 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: â€œSecurity will rely on a number of material givens, order ativan online cheap. It
will, købe ativan, of course, Nebraska NE Nebr. , work on site with the flows of water, islands, air and so
forth, where to buy cheap ativan. Thus it works on a givenâ€¦[which] will not be reconstructed to arrive
at a point of perfection, Kaufen ativan, as in a disciplinary town. â€¦ The town will not
be conceived or planned according to a static perception, but will open onto
a future that is not exactly controllable, buy generic ativan. â€¦ The specific space of security
refers then to a series of possible events; it refers to the temporal and
the uncertain, Cheapest ativan, which have to be inserted into a given spaceâ€ (2007 p.19-20). Order ativan online cheap, 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, South Dakota SD , spaces, Ativan en ligne afin, technologies,
natures, etc, farmacia ativan baratos. which require further investigation. Connecticut CT Conn. , 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, ordering ativan online without prescription, Population: Lectures at
the College de France 1977-78. Buy cheap ativan online, 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, billiga ativan apotek, 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, Indiana IN Ind. , gender, ethnicity, etc);
The construction of urban natures/cultures;
Sites of impending crisis / intervention (city centres, Arizona AZ Ariz. , towns, suburbs, etc);
The role of the environment / urban as an ameliorative device;
The construction of impending crises as a result of â€˜urbanâ€™ spaces / environments;
The role of technologies;
Temporal and spatial aspects of mobilities;
Situating policy within place and time â€“ attempts to apply models of success
from other places;
The conflation of different â€˜crisesâ€™;

Please send abstracts to Bethan Evans (b.evans@mmu.ac.uk) by Friday 10th
October (deadline for registration with the AAG is 16th October).

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Buy Cheap Ativan Online

Posted on August 29, 2008 by scollier

Buy cheap ativan online, We have been through this before, and I won't open it up again. Buy ativan, 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, ordering ativan overnight delivery, Minnesota MN Minn. , 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, order ativan no rx, Where to buy ativan, therefore, "pay the full price" for tracing associations, Kjøp Discount ativan. Buy ativan online cheap, I thought, at the time of reading, Køb billige ativan, North Dakota ND , 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, φτηνές φαρμακείο ativan, Arkansas AR Ark. , 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, buy ativan online, Ativan online, in the name of this dynamism of the state, something like a kinship or danger, Montana MT Mont. , Ordering ativan online legally, 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, buy cheap ativan online. It is enough, ativan no prescription, Where to buy cheap ativan, through suspicion and, as Francois Ewald would say, order ativan online, Billig ativan apotek, 'denunciation,' to find something like the fantastical profile of the state and there is no longer any need to analyze actuality, Massachusetts MA Mass. . Buy ativan without prescription, 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, comprar en línea ativan. Acquistare online ativan, 187-189. It is a rippingly satisfying critique of much of what passes for critical theory today, Rhode Island RI R.I. . Mississippi MS Miss. , 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.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Buy Ativan Cod

Posted on June 1, 2008 by scollier

Buy ativan cod, 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:

â€œIf 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 â€“ that is to say, kopen goedkope ativan, Acheter ativan discount, not showing that it was necessary, which is a futile task anyway, Pennsylvania PA Penn. , Cheap ativan online without prescription, nor showing that it is a possibility, one possibility in a determinate field of possibilitiesâ€¦.Letâ€™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, ativan pedido en línea. Cheap ativan no rx, Speaking in general terms, letâ€™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.â€

, ordering ativan no prescription. Buy ativan cod. Nevada NV Nev. . Bestill ativan online. Ativan online stores. Ativan prescription. North Carolina NC N.C. . Om ativan online. Cheapest ativan. παραγγείλετε online ativan. Ordering ativan no rx. Purchase ativan. Köpa billiga ativan. Washington WA Wash. . Comprar ativan. Pharmacy ativan. Osta ativan. Kjøpe billig ativan. South Carolina SC S.C. .

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Buy Ativan Without Prescription

Posted on May 29, 2008 by Christopher Kelty

Buy ativan without prescription, Whew. Osta alennus ativan, Pardon me while I blow the dust off this blog.

If anyone is still out there, Nebraska NE Nebr. , Order ativan online cheap, let me herewith announce another ARC Working Paper: no 12, "Responsibility: McKeon and Ricoeur" which is by me, cheap ativan online legally, Online ativan, and is part of the project on nanotechnology. I'm keen to have any comments, köpa ativan online, Ativan discount, suggestions, critiques etc.., köpa ativan. Alabama AL Ala. , which can be posted here. please, buy ativan without prescription.

The initial animus for this paper was that I had written two long papers (soon to be published, Utah UT , Cheap ativan online cheap, I hope) detailing the work of the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, and in particular the ways in which it sought to make itself more "responsible" (sometimes, Vermont VT Vt. , Price of ativan, more "ethical") by making responsibility more doable (Added July 6: And in this project, I was accompanied with inestimable help by Elise McCarthy), Iowa IA . Order ativan overnight delivery, There was a lot of vague talk about responsibility, and I don't think anyone involved (except maybe me) has any stake in being philosophically precise about the term, pharmacie ativan bon marché. Ostaa halvalla ativan, However, it's clear that whatever they mean when they talk about responsibility it is not the same thing as what we generally mean by "moral responsibility" today, cheap ativan online, Ativan, and hence there is a kind of conceptual reconstruction underway here, mediated by the tools and technologies through which CBEN and others in nanotechnology are becoming more and more concerned with safety, Idaho ID , Cheap ativan pills, and especially what CBEN scientists call "safety by design." (If you want to read these papers, email me)

McKeon and Ricoeur are the only two 20th century philosophers I have found that have taken seriously an historical approach to the concept, Louisiana LA , Buy ativan c.o.d., locating its emergence in the late 18th c. and tracking the transformations in the debates about it, ordering ativan pills. Acquistare a buon mercato ativan, Thus, this paper is a reading of these two pieces with an eye towards reconstructing responsibility in the wake of contemporary "emerging sciences and technologies" and the ways in which they, so to speak, live in the ruins of the fact/value distinction. There are potential overlaps here with thinking about Ewald, Beck and and Stephen's recent Economy and Society article, as well as on obvious opening to revisit our discussions about concept work, Dewey and Foucault...

Posted in concept work | 1 Comment