January 18, 2008
Google.org Announces Core Initiatives to Combat Climate Change, Poverty and Emerging Threats
Google Offers a Map for Its Philanthropy
See Google.org for all project areas
One of the 5 areas is named Predict and Prevent:
“Google.org supports efforts to empower communities to predict and prevent events before they become local, regional, or global crises, by identifying “hot spots” and enabling a rapid response.â€
The three most interesting grants within the Predict and Prevent project area:
$5,000,000 multi-year grant to establish this nonprofit organization focused on improving early detection, preparedness, and response capabilities for global health threats and humanitarian crises
Global Health and Security Initiative:
$2,500,000 multi-year grant to strengthen national and sub-regional disease surveillance systems in the Mekong Basin area (Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, and China-Yunnan province)
$450,000 multi-year grant to conduct in-depth research into the use of online data sources for disease surveillance
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?
January 15, 2008
“The smoking [aerosol] gun” at Ft. Detrick?
A comment from the Sunshine Project biodefense listserve:
“…and there are so many dual-use, offensive-defense projects in the April 2007 CBDP (Department of Defense Chemical and Biological Defense Program) Report that it would take me an entire chapter of another book to go through them all, including aerosolization projects. One even calls for the aerial delivery of an alleged GM vaccine for nerve gas. a sick joke and a fraud. all US armed forces have injectors for nerve gas. you have to inject yourself within about 10 seconds after exposure or you are dead about a minute later. no way you could wait for some alleged vaccine to be delivered by air. you would have died a hideous death by then. no it is clear they are developing a system for the aerial delivery of nerve agents in combat as a weapon. remember: offense (agent) plus defense (vaccine) plus delivery system (aerosolization) equals a weapon.â€
sunshine project: biodefense
link to 2007 CBDP report
Europe equivocates on biofuels
New York Times: Europe May Ban Imports Of Some Biofuels Crops
BBC: Europe rethinks Biofuels Guidelines
November 7, 2007
diagnostic of biopolitics note 2 – a collaborative note from Lyle and Anthony
So Lyle had a great insight relative to our conversation yesterday regarding the diagnostic and our argument relative to the reworking of the biopolitical. In October 2007, the Berkeley Human Practices Lab had a meeting at LBNL with scientists from the Keasling Lab and teleconferenced with the Endy Lab at MIT and the MIT Human Practices policy representative. In this discussion PR made a tripartite distinction between safety, security and preparedness. Some way through the presentation a certain nervousness (bizarrely) with precision in concepts was made apparent as one of the MIT folks, rehearsing a point made by a Swiss Science and Society policy wonk, suggested that there is no need to be precise about the distinction as in German safety and security are subsumed under the same term. This was echoed by others in the room wanting to know how these distinctions could be operationalized into first order deliverables. After the session, one of the postdocs came up to me and suggested that in biology, “precise†has technical meaning that is different from “accurateâ€. Precise means using the same method of measurement in all your experiments His point was to suggest that we need to be accurate, and not precise per se. I reply that statements about the world may turn out not to be accurate, but if your measurement methods (distinctions / metrics) are appropriate then you can remediate your statements about the world. By having an appropriate metric, you can mark distinctiveness as well as mark patterns.
The distinction between precision and accuracy can be usefully mapped onto our discussion about biopolitical equipment and the utility of the diagnostic. As we noted, the figure of biopolitical equipment in the diagnostic is not meant to be a claim about any actual object in the world. Rather, it is an ideal-type that enables the user to make distinctions and discover patterns with precision. By making this distinction, we can avoid the trap of endless debate about what biopolitics “really is†(and the proliferation of claims about this). Rather than arguing about whether the diagnostic represents biopolitics “in truth†or accurately, we can discuss whether it is appropriate to our materials. In this sense then we return to Jerome’s conundrum, how does one choose who gets put through the diagnostic machine? As he suggests, hopefully it is not just so as to make the diagnostic work, but rather that you can use the precision in distinctions in order to work over relations. The relations you are trying to describe do not exist within the diagnostic, as such this points us to the “outside†of the diagnsitic, where the distinctions made through the diagnostic can orient inquiry but cannot describe these relations as they exist outside of it.
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 10, 2007
Foucault Archives
I imagine most know about this already, but in case you don’t, here’s the link. I believe that the website is new, though the organization is not.
WORKING PAPERS UPDATE
The Working Papers have been reformatted and reposted. New papers will be added soon.
July 28, 2007
PUBLICATIONS UPDATE
The publications section of the Document Repository has been updated. More to come soon.