Biopower, Biopolitics, and Bare Life

Announcements and Important Links
Dr. Arthur Kleinman, CBD Distinguished Lecturer (at Hampshire College, April 16th). Dr. Kleinman's talk is entitled, "Depression, Suicide, Culture and Global Pharmaceuticals: The Moral and Political Economy of Psychiatric Disorders in Global Health.” Click here for more details.

Conference: Biopolitics and Its Vicissitudes (at Amherst College, April 17th and 18th) [[Media:Biopolitics_and_its_Vicissitudes.pdf|Flyer (PDF)]]

Facing Life With a Lethal Gene- NYtimes.com Huntington article

Mini-Ethnography Resource Site

Class Blog (requires invitation and login)

Online Glossary

Online Office Hours Sign-Up

[[Media:SS_211_Biopower_Syllabus_SP09.pdf|Syllabus]]

Course Description
In recent years, social and cultural anthropologists have increasingly relied on the concepts of biopower, biopolitics, and bare life to frame ethnographic inquiry. Originally coined by Michel Foucault in the History of Sexuality, biopower refers to “what brought life and its mechanism into the realm of explicit calculations and made knowledge-power an agent of transformation of human life.” In other words, biopower references what Rabinow and Rose call a set of “strategies for governing life”—the idea that questions about how we live and how we die, and even how we envision life itself, are bound in complex ways to forms of power.

This course will introduce the influential concept of biopower, as well as the related ideas of biopolitics and bare life, in their theoretical forms and in their various ethnographic translations. We will trace the widespread development of these concepts in contemporary anthropological analysis and look at the “strategies for governing life” in a variety of contexts including the international traffic and exchange in human organs; pharmaceutical research and testing; access to drugs and genetic technologies; disaster management; and, ethics and humanitarianism. The prerequisite is having completed at least one social science course.

Course Units


 * Introduction to Biopower, Biopolitics, and Bare Life
 * Biopower
 * Biopolitics
 * Three Years Later: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability
 * Biological Citizenship and Risk Politics
 * The Politics of Life Itself
 * Bare Life
 * Bio(political)ethics
 * Ethics, Biopolitics, and Humanitarianism
 * Conclusion: Biopower, Biopolitics, and Bare Life

Syllabus
COURSE SCHEDULE This course schedule is subject to change based on the needs of the class. You are responsible for any changes to this syllabus announced during class. Any changes will also be posted on the course homepage. Please note that some of the reading links listed here require access from a Hampshire server.

WEEK 1 Wed Jan 28 Introduction to Biopower, Biopolitics, and Bare Life

WEEK 2 Mon Feb 2 Biopower

Foucault, Michel 1988 Right of Death and Power over Life. In The Foucault Reader. P. Rabinow, ed. Pp. 258-272. New York: Pantheon Books. (O)

Key terms and concepts: biopower; biosociality; governmentality; neoliberalism; sovereignty; “anatomo-politics of the human body”; “biopolitics of the population”; techniques of power

Wed Feb 4 Rabinow, Paul, and Nikolas Rose 2006 Biopower Today. BioSocieties 1(2):195-217. (O)

NB: We will continue to discuss the Foucault reading from Monday, so bring the reading and your notes.

WEEK 3 Mon Feb 9 Biopolitics

Foucault, Michel 1997 The Birth of Biopolitics. In Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Foucault. Vol. 1. P. Rabinow and J. D. Faubion, eds. pp. 73-79. New York: New Press. (O)

2003 Lecture 11, 17 March 1976. In Society must be defended: lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. M. Bertani, A. Fontana, F. Ewald, and D. Macey, eds. pp. 239-264. New York: Picador. (T)

Key terms and concepts: biopower; biosociality; governmentality; neoliberalism; sovereignty

Wed Feb 11 [[Media:Mini-ethnography_workshop_%28SS_211_DSP09%29.pdf|MINI-ETHNOGRAPHY WORKSHOP (In-Class)]] Key terms and concepts: ethnography

Reading for Workshop:

Franklin, Sarah, and Celia Roberts 2006 Studying PGD. In Born and Made: An Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis. pp. 75-93. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. (O)

[[Media:Mini-Ethnography_Brainstorming_%28SS_211_SP09%29.pdf|ASSIGNMENT: Mini-Ethnography Brainstorming Assignment distributed.]]

WEEK 4 Mon Feb 16 Three Years Later: Katrina and the Biopolitics of Disposability

Collier, Stephen J., and Andrew Lakoff 2005 On Regimes of Living. In Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds. pp. 22-39. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. (T)

Giroux, Henry A. Stormy Weather, pp. 1-79 (T)

Key terms and concepts: regimes of living; disposability

[[Media:Ethnographic_Exercise_-1.pdf|ASSIGNMENT: Ethnographic Exercise #1 distributed in class. Paper due Mon Feb 23rd at the beginning of class.]]

Some possibilities for inspiration:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html http://katrinaaction.org/ http://www.planethospital.com/ http://www.ivfcharotar.com/about_us.html

Wed Feb 18 No Class--Advising Day

DEADLINE: Mini-Ethnography Brainstorming Assignment due at noon in my mailbox.

WEEK 5 Mon Feb 23 Biological Citizenship and Risk Politics

Beck, Ulrich 1994 The Reinvention of Politics: Toward a Theory of Reflexive Modernization. In Reflexive modernization: politics, tradition and aesthetics in the modern social order. U. Beck, A. Giddens, and S. Lash, eds. pp. 1-55. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (T) [Read pp. 1-23 only]

Key terms and concepts: reflexive modernization; risk society

DEADLINE: Ethnographic Exercise #1 due at the beginning of class.

Wed Feb 25 Rose, Nikolas, and C. Novas 2005 Biological Citizenship. In Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds. pp. xiii, 494 p. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. (T)

Nguyen, Vinh-Kim 2005 Anti-Retroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic Citizenship. In Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds. pp. 124-144. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. (T)

Key terms and concepts: biological citizenship; therapeutic citizenship

WEEK 6 Mon Mar 2 Guest Lecturer, Katelin Wilton

POSTPONED BECAUSE OF SNOWDAY; RESCHEDULED FOR APRIL 22nd

Wed Mar 4 Biological Citizenship and Risk Politics: Life Exposed

Review key terms and concepts from glossary. Make sure you understand these and bring any questions with you to class.

Petryna, Adriana 2002 Life exposed: biological citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Chapters 1-4] (T)

http://pripyat.com/en/

Key terms and concepts: biological citizenship; “illness-as-counterpolitics”; poterpili (sufferers); sviaz (tie); technogenic catastrophe

Case Study: Biological citizenship and 9/11 Workers

9/11 Health and Environmental Issues News, NY Times http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sept_11_2001/health_and_environmental_issues/index.html

City Questions 9/11 Workers’ Claims of Illness, NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/nyregion/25health.html

[[Media:Ethnographic_Exercise_-2_%28Petryna_2002-Class_1%29.pdf|ASSIGNMENT: Ethnographic Exercise #2 distributed in class. Paper due Monday March 9th at the beginning of class.]]

WEEK 7 Mon Mar 9 Biological Citizenship and Risk Politics: Life Exposed

Petryna, Adriana 2002 Life exposed: biological citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Chapters 5-8] (T)

Key terms and concepts: "environment,"biostrata, organika, seredniak (the middle person), "the 'aesthetics' of state intervention," lichnost (sense of individual self), medicalizaiton/"medicalized self," "regimes of truth"

DEADLINE: Ethnographic Exercise #2 due at the beginning of class.

Wed Mar 11 The Politics of Life Itself

Rose, Nikolas 2007 The politics of life itself: biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Introduction &amp; Chapters 1-2] (T)

Key terms and concepts: bioeconomics; expertise; molecularization; optimization; subjectification

[[Media:Mini-Ethnography_Outline_Guidelines_%28SS_211_SP09%29.pdf|DEADLINE: Mini-Ethnography Outline due at the beginning of class.]] 

WEEK 8 Mon Mar 16 No Class--Spring Break

Wed Mar 18 No Class--Spring Break

WEEK 9 Mon Mar 23 The Politics of Life Itself

Rose, Nikolas 2007 The politics of life itself: biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Chapters 3, 4, 6] (T)

Maher, Brendan 2007 His Daughter's DNA. Nature 449:772-776. (O)

Watters, Ethan 2006 DNA Is Not Destiny. In Discover. Vol. 27. Pp. 32-37; 75: Discover Media LLC. (O)

Key terms and concepts: susceptibility; enhancement; geneticization; ethical problematization; life strategies; biosociality

Wed Mar 25 Introduction to Bare Life

Agamben, Giorgio 1998 Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. [Excerpts: pp. 1-12; 15-29] (T)

Arendt, Hannah 1951 “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man” (O)

Key terms and concepts: bios vs. zoe; homo sacer; state of exception

WEEK 10 Mon Mar 30 Agamben, Giorgio 1998 Homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. [Excerpts: pp. 119-165] (T)

Wed Apr 1 Cohen, Lawrence 2005 Operability, Bioavailability, and Exception. In Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds. pp. 79-90. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. (T)

Zizek, Slavoj 2005 Biopolitics: Between Abu Ghraib and Terri Schiavo. Artforum International 44(4):270-271. (O)

Video: Oprah, Wombs for Rent (first aired October 2007)

Key terms and concepts: bare life; bioavailability; operability; sacred life; state of exception

[[Media:Ethnographic_Exercise_-3_%28Agamben%2C_Cohen%2C_Oprah%29.pdf|ASSIGNMENT: Ethnographic Exercise #3 distributed in class. Paper due Monday April 6th at the beginning of class. (Extension granted to Wed Apr 8th if necessary)]]

WEEK 11 Mon Apr 6 Guest Lecturer, Aliza Elkin Ann Anagnost, "The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi)." Public Culture. Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2004. pp 189-208. (O)

Susan Greenhalgh, "Planned Births, Unplanned Persons: 'Population' in the Making of Chinese Modernity." American Ethnologist. Vol. 20, Issue 2, 2003. pp 196-215. (O)

[[Media:Mini-Ethnography_Interim_Report_Guidelines_%28SS_211_SP09%29.pdf|DEADLINE: Ethnographic Exercise #3 due at the beginning of class. (Extension granted to Wed Apr 8th if necessary)]]

Wed Apr 8 Bio(political)ethics

Biehl, Joäo 2004 Life of the mind: The interface of psychopharmaceuticals, domestic economies, and social abandonment. American Ethnologist 31(4):475-496. (O) http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ae.2004.31.4.475

Fullwiley, Duana 2006 Biosocial Suffering: Order and Illness in Urban West Africa. BioSocieties 1(4):421-438. (O)

Key terms and concepts: “life codes”; social death; “zones of abandonment”; biosocial suffering

[[Media:Mini-Ethnography_Interim_Report_Guidelines_%28SS_211_SP09%29.pdf|DEADLINE: Mini-Ethnography Interim Report due at the beginning of class.]] 

WEEK 12 Mon Apr 13 Bio(political)ethics

Petryna, Adriana 2005 Ethical Variability: Drug Development and Globalizing Clinical Trials. American Ethnologist 32(2):183-197. (O) http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ae.2005.32.2.183

Sunder Rajan, Kaushik 2007 Experimental Values. New Left Review 45:67-88. (O)

Washington Post, "The Body Hunters" [link updated 4/12/09]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/01/AR2008100101381.html

Key terms and concepts: bioethics; contract research organization (CRO); ethical variability; “treatment naïve”

[[Media:Ethnographic_Exercise_-4_%28Petryna%2C_Sunder_Rajan%2C_Body_Hunters%29.pdf|ASSIGNMENT: Ethnographic Exercise #4 distributed in class. Paper due Monday April 20th at the beginning of class.]]

Wed Apr 15 Ethics, Biopolitics &amp; Humanitarianism

Redfield, Peter 2005 Doctors, Borders, and Life in Crisis. Cultural Anthropology 20(3):328-361. (O) http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/can.2005.20.3.328

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy 2005 The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global Traffic in "Fresh" Organs. In Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. A. Ong and S. J. Collier, eds. pp. 145-167. Malden, MA: Blackwell. (T)

Key terms and concepts: transplant tourism; commodity fetishism; “body mafia”

WEEK 13 Mon Apr 20 Ethics, Biopolitics &amp; Humanitarianism Fassin, Didier, and Estelle D'Halluin 2005 The Truth from the Body: Medical Certificates as Ultimate Evidence for Asylum Seekers. American Anthropologist 107(4):597-608. (O) http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/aa.2005.107.4.597

Ticktin, Miriam 2006 Where Ethics and Politics Meet: The Violence of Humanitarianism in France. American Ethnologist 33(1):33-49. (O) http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ae.2006.33.1.33

Key terms and concepts: TBD

DEADLINE: Ethnographic Exercise #4 due at the beginning of class.

Wed Apr 22 Guest Lecturer, Katelin Wilton

Wilton, Katelin Swing, "Aiding Contradictions: Representation, Resilience, and Global Inequality." DIV III. Vol. Part II, Spring 2009. [O]

"ARVs and Ramadan." International Research Network on Religion and AIDS in Africa. 16/4/09.[O]

WEEK 14 Conclusion: Biopower, Biopolitics, and Bare Life

Mon Apr 27 No regular class. Evening meeting for informal project presentations, 5:30-7:30pm (Location TBA). There will be food.

Wed Apr 29 Last day of class

Conclusion Student Mini-Ethnography Presentations if necessary

[[Media:Mini-Ethnography_Final_Report_Guidelines_%28SS211_SP09%29.pdf|DEADLINE: Mini-Ethnography Final Report due Monday May 4th at noon.]]

Course Goals
1) To introduce students to the following substantive areas: cultural/medical anthropology; social studies of science; and legal studies. 2) To introduce students to qualitative ethnographic methods and social scientific research methods. 3) To help students to build and improve skills in critical reading and writing. 4) To challenge students to develop new perspectives and to expand their skills of critical thinking. 5) To enable students to design and implement individual project-based work.

Course Requirements
Expectations and Requirements This class is comprised of challenging subject matter and is designed to be discussion-based and cumulative. You are encouraged to be an active participant and listener in class; thus, attendance and preparation are necessary and mandatory. You are expected to complete all readings promptly and to come to class on time with questions and comments. Films are an integral part of course materials and may only be viewed in class. Assignments will often be started and worked on during class time so that you can benefit from interactive engagement with me and with your peers.

All assignments must be completed promptly and thoroughly in order to receive a final evaluation for the course. Unless otherwise indicated, all assignments are due at the beginning of class. Late assignments will be noted on a student’s evaluation and/or will be reflected in a student’s grade. Consistently late assignments will result in the student being asked to withdraw from the course. More than two unexcused absences throughout the term will result in a “no evaluation.”

If you are struggling with course materials or are experiencing other difficulties that interfere with course work, please get in touch with me immediately. I can’t help you if I don’t know there’s a problem.

Other Stuff Hard copies only. I will not evaluate e-mailed papers.

Please turn off all cell phones, Blackberries, pagers, and other distracting, ringing, singing, texting non-course-related machines.

You are encouraged to bring your laptop to class in order to take notes or to do in-class research only. E-mailing, web-surfing, and Facebook don’t count as in-class research, so use these applications outside of class. In other words, such applications and their counterparts should not even be open during class. If students abuse the privilege of having laptops in the classroom, they will no longer be allowed in class.

Course Assignments and Evaluation
Assignments Discussion Board/Class Blog For each class, you are to post a thoughtful, well-formulated question that could be used as a point of departure for class discussion. You should post these questions on the class Hampedia site discussion board by 10 pm the evening before class so that I'll have a chance to review them. I am looking for evidence of careful reading and thoughtful engagement. It is perfectly fine if some of the material is challenging for you. Ask the question for which you'd like to have further explication. You are also encouraged to respond to your peers and to include links to websites, online newspapers and magazines, etc. that are related to the readings.

Online Glossary The reading for this course is both challenging and intensive. I have identified some of the key terms and concepts throughout the syllabus. To help you work through these ideas as well as to facilitate in-class discussion, you will be asked to contribute to a collective Online Glossary throughout the term. Each student will be responsible for writing and posting an entry explaining the significance of a concept from that week’s readings. You will be asked to write 1-2 paragraphs about the concept and will be evaluated on your level of understanding and quality of written work.

Ethnographic Assignments/Short Papers (4) Based on each in-class ethnographic assignment and associated class readings, you will write a short paper (3-5 pages) in response to a set of questions provided by me (distributed in class). There are four of these short papers assigned throughout the semester. See the course schedule for details and deadlines.

Mini-Ethnography The major assignment for this course is the mini-ethnography. You will design and implement your own mini-ethnographic project throughout the semester on a subject of your choice. The mini-ethnography consists of five parts:


 * Brainstorming Assignment (due February 18th)
 * Outline (due March 2nd)
 * Interim Report (due April 3rd)
 * In-Class Presentation (schedule TBD)
 * Final Report (due April 29th)

In this assignment, you are being asked to orient yourself in a different way to the questions we will explore in class. More specifically, I want you to go out and explore various spaces; listen carefully to people around you; observe and note what they say and do; and think hard about law, social organization, politics, and culture. Another way to think about it is what kinds of social and cultural phenomena can you observe, describe, interpret, understand, and analyze that help you to get a better sense of a particular question or issue relating to class themes? I will give an in-class workshop early in the semester to further explain the assignment and to help you get started. We will also be doing in-class ethnographic exercises throughout the term.

Evaluation Criteria Final evaluations will focus on the following areas: • effort • attendance, preparation, and participation • skills development • quality of written work and attention to detail • individual improvement throughout the semester

Course Policies
Students with Disabilities Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations is requested to speak with me by our third class period. All discussions will remain confidential. Students should also contact Joel Dansky, Hampshire’s Disabilities Services Coordinator. He may be reached at 413-559-5423 or via email jdansky@hampshire.edu. For more information, please see the Disabilities Services webpage: http://www.hampshire.edu/cms/index.php?id=3369

Ethics of Scholarship Plagiarism Plagiarism is a serious offence and will not be tolerated. Ignorance is not an excuse. You are responsible for ensuring that you understand and do not violate the codes of ethical scholarship. A good definition of plagiarism is:

“Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work as if it were your own, whether you mean to or not. ‘Someone else’s work’ means anything that is not your own idea, even if it is presented in your own style. It includes material from books, journals or any other printed source, the work of other students or staff, information from the Internet, software programs and other electronic material, designs and ideas. It also includes the organization or structuring of any such material.” Victoria University of Wellington (http://www.vuw.ac.nz/home/glossary/#p). Accessed September 4, 2007.

You are encouraged to discuss and to work on your assignments with classmates. Nevertheless, your work must be your own. If you wish to include work you’ve done or are doing for another course to fulfill course requirements for this one, you must get my approval first.

Please use either Chicago or MLA citation style. If you are unsure about how properly to cite, or if you have questions about whether or not something is “common knowledge,” please ask me. See also “General Requirements for the Acknowledgement of Sources” at the following URL: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~honor/

For more information about the ethics of scholarship, see Hampshire’s webpage: https://intranet.hampshire.edu/cms/index.php?id=7357

Incompletes Incompletes will be given at my discretion only in cases of documented emergency or special circumstance late in the semester, provided that you have been making satisfactory progress in the course.