Pharmaceuticalization & Biopower

Other commitments have kept me away for a while, but I couldn't resist posting the abstracts of these two pieces, given how much they have to do with the themes of this blog. What we have here are some critical tools that can be used to qualify the characterization of modern societies in terms of the life sciences. If you have institutional access, these are essential reading:

Pharmaceuticalization of Society in Context: Theoretical, Empirical and Health Dimensions

1. John Abraham
   1. University of Sussex, j.w.abraham@sussex.ac.uk
   2. Sociology August 2010 vol. 44 no. 4603-622

Abstract

Sociological interest in pharmaceuticals has intensified, heightening awareness of ‘pharmaceuticalization’. It is argued that pharmaceuticalization should be understood by reference to five main biosociological explanatory factors: biomedicalism, medicalization, pharmaceutical industry promotion and marketing, consumerism, and regulatory-state ideology or policy. The biomedicalism thesis, which claims that expansion of drug treatment reflects advances in biomedical science to meet health needs, is found to be a weak explanatory factor because a significant amount of growth in pharmaceuticalization is inconsistent with scientific evidence, and because drug innovations offering significant therapeutic advance have been declining across the sector, including areas of major health need. Some elements of consumerism have undermined pharmaceuticalization, even causing de-pharmaceuticalization in some therapeutic sub-fields. However, other aspects of consumerism, together with industry promotion, medicalization, and deregulatory state policies are found to be drivers of increased pharmaceuticalization in ways that are largely outside, or sub-optimal for, significant therapeutic advances in the interests of public health.

• biomedicalism
• consumerism
• drug innovation
• marketing
• medicalization
• pharmaceutical industry
• regulatory state

Life, Science, and Biopower

1. Sujatha Raman
   1. Institute for Science and Society (ISS), Law & Social Sciences Building West Wing, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom,sujatha.raman@nottingham.ac.uk

1. Richard Tutton
1. Centre for the Social and Economic Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
2. Science Technology Human ValuesSeptember 2010 vol. 35 no. 5 711-734

Abstract

This article critically engages with the influential theory of ‘‘molecularized biopower’’ and ‘‘politics of life’’ developed by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. Molecularization is assumed to signal the end of population-centred biopolitics and the disciplining of subjects as described by Foucault, and the rise of new forms of biosociality and biological citizenship. Drawing on empirical work in Science and Technology Studies (STS), we argue that this account is limited by a focus on novelty and assumptions about the transformative power of the genetic life sciences. We suggest that biopower consists of a more complex cluster of relationships between the molecular and the population. The biological existence of different human beings is politicized through different complementary and competing discourses around medical therapies, choices at the beginning and end of life, public health, environment, migration and border controls, implying a multiple rather than a singular politics of life.

• biopower
• biopolitics
• life sciences
• politics of life
• molecular politics

Zombie Boot Camp

This clip I've posted here is from Pink Tentacle. It's very easy just to laugh and dismiss it as trivial, but I'm more inclined to the view that there may be an undercurrent of telling satire in this publicity stunt. So what kind of a logical extreme in biocultural planning could be relevant according to current theorists? Moreover, what about actual policies the Japanese government has considered implementing? Even if there is an element of hyperbole to such a reading strategy, sometimes I think that is ok, in the same way that science fiction can serve as a form of social theory, a yardstick to measure prospects for dystopia, or the progressive spirit of utopia.

It follows that the idea of the "bootcamp" is actually not far removed from recent plans devised to deal with Japan's growing population of "shut ins" (which I've blogged about previously) and NEETS (Not in Employment Education or Training). Apparently the asocial/non productive must be subject to the utilitarian calculus; the decommodified must be recommodified, given that they mark the failure of the liberal subject to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

Perhaps this might be considered as further ratification of Nick Turse's thesis in The Complex that military culture is threatening to increasingly colonise everyday life (here though in response to the global recession, as Turse's book preceded this event)? To begin thinking of camps also logically leads to consideration of Agamben's dystopic thesis of "the state of exception" and its connections to the biosocial management of a population. To be deprived of your autonomy, a hallmark of what it means to be a living human being, is on a continuum with the zombie laborers familiar from films such as I Walked With a Zombie. But we should be attentive to a historical shift to more accurately capture the biopolitical dimension I've introduced here. William Bogard in his Empire of the Living dead (published in: Mortality, Volume 13, Issue 2 May 2008 , pages 187 - 200) describes it thus:

"The corpse is no longer a dominant organizing figure of power and knowledge in postmodern network society. Limited by its own corporeality and tied to modern notions of the individual, its utility in controlling life has been superseded by technologies that control birth. This essay draws a line from Foucault's analysis of the dead body as an object of biopower to Baudrillard's and Deleuze's vision of control societies, in which the body disappears and biopower becomes a function of information and genetic modification. It uses the popular film image of the “living dead” to trace this evolution of biopower from the dissection of bodies at the end of life to the pre-programming and simulation of life at its inception: an evolution from the corpse to the clone, from the individuated dead body to the hybrid, dividualized body".

So before getting to zombie boot camp specifically, the broader social context in Japan should be taken into account. Were the dystopia to ever be more fully realised then, these "disciplinary techniques" would, if we take on board Bogard's perspective, mark only the beginning of a more efficient form of "pre-programming":

"The ruling LDP is contemplating a plan which would see hikikomori, NEETs, the unemployed and other undesirables bundled off to army boot camps to learn such useful trades as tree felling and ditch digging.

The issue of the supposedly endemic hikikomori (socially isolated people typically not in conventional employment) and NEET problems has vexed politicians desperate to shore up tax revenues for some time; a recent law ensured they would get help whether liked it or not, but this new proposal goes a step further.

The plan will see unemployed from throughout the nation gathered up and collected in military camps, where they will live for six month periods.

The state will there feed and house them, and they will be drilled in the sort of pork barrel schemes which have been so successful in lifting Japan out of its economic malaise; they will work tending forests and abandoned farmland, as well as gain qualifications useful in the construction industry, such as in the operation of heavy machinery.

The politicians proposing the measure all happen to be leading figures involved with the military, agriculture, or construction. It will be tacked on to an upcoming economic stimulus bill.

The scheme is modeled directly on the organisations formed by President Roosevelt to attempt to combat the impact of the Depression.

There is at this stage apparently no talk of making the scheme compulsory, although just how they will get notoriously recalcitrant hikikomori into the camps is not clear. Miruku may not be enough…"

Via Asahi.

Suffice to say, I will continue to test the theoretical application of biopower to social policy by referring to concrete examples if, (as seems likely), and when, they arise. With a gentle smile, I can now turn to the zombie boot camp in question:

"The Saikyō Senritsu Meikyū (”Ultimate Horror Maze”) — a 900-meter-long zombie-infested labyrinth at Japan’s Fuji-Q Highland amusement park — is billed as the world’s longest and scariest house of horror.

However, at a “press conference” staged last month, organizers announced they had temporarily shut down the facility because the zombie staff had lost their edge and were not frightening people enough. While the haunted house was closed, the undead employees were put through a rigorous training program designed to upgrade their zombie skills.

Here’s some video showing the treatment they had to endure...."

The horror house has since reopened and the camp-hardened zombies are reportedly as scary as ever.

[More zombie training camp videos]

Very timely.....

The Vital Systems Security collaboration examines how, today, security is being constituted as an object of knowledge, intervention, and political reflection. It proposes that the security of “vital systems” – such as energy, transportation, communication and health – is one norm in relationship to which security is being reproblematized. A central goal of the collaboration is to examine these issues through collective, conceptually driven inquiry that addresses rapidly developing contemporary problems.

On this site you can read more about the VSS collaboration, find out about current projects, check out our papers and other publications, or go to our blog.

What’s New:

• 4/2009: Disaster and the Politics of Intervention, edited by Andrew Lakoff, is now in production with Columbia University Press.
• 10/2008: Biosecurity Interventions, edited by Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff, is available for purchase at Columbia University Press.
• 8/2008: Lakoff’s article “The Generic Biothreat” is out in Cultural Anthropology.
• 7/2008: Collier and Lakoff’s chapter “The Vulnerability of Vital Systems: How ‘Critical Infrastructure Became a Security Problem” is out in Myriam Dunn Cavelty and Kristian Soby Kristensen’s book Securing ‘the Homeland.’
• 7/2008: Fearnley’s article “Signals Come and Go: Syndromic Surveillance and Styles of Biosecurity” is out in Environment and Planning A.
• 5/2008: Collier’s “Enacting Catastrophe” is out in Economy and Society.
• 1/2008: Working papers by Ozgode and Lindseth on the Office of Emergency Preparedness are now available on the OEP project page.
• 1/2008: Collier and Lakoff’s article “Distributed Preparedness” is out in Environment and Planning D.

Animal Capital

Book Description

The juxtaposition of biopolitical critique and animal studies—two subjects seldom theorized together—signals the double-edged intervention of Animal Capital. Nicole Shukin pursues a resolutely materialist engagement with the “question of the animal,” challenging the philosophical idealism that has dogged the question by tracing how the politics of capital and of animal life impinge upon one another in market cultures of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Shukin argues that an analysis of capital’s incarnations in animal figures and flesh is pivotal to extending the examination of biopower beyond its effects on humans. “Rendering” refers simultaneously to cultural technologies and economies of mimesis and to the carnal business of boiling down and recycling animal remains. Rendering’s accommodation of these discrepant logics, she contends, suggests a rubric for the critical task of tracking the biopolitical conditions and contradictions of animal capital across the spaces of culture and economy.

From the animal capital of abattoirs and automobiles, films and mobile phones, to pandemic fear of species-leaping diseases such as avian influenza and mad cow, Shukin makes startling linkages between visceral and virtual currencies in animal life, illuminating entanglements of species, race, and labor in the conditions of capitalism. In reckoning with the violent histories and intensifying contradictions of animal rendering, Animal Capital raises provocative and pressing questions about the cultural politics of nature.

Subject Animals -- Symbolic aspects. Animals -- Economic aspects. Animals -- Political aspects. Human-animal relationships. Wildlife utilization.

Policing borders against alien intruders

This is not a gushing fanboy style blog, so I can offer no guarantees as to the quality of the projected District 9 feature length expansion of the short film Alive in Joburg. But I still think the theme of apartheid in relation to aliens (the film is set in South Africa) looks quite promising. At the very least, it may warrant a chapter unto itself in a future edition of Ziauddin Sardar's and Sean Cubitt's Aliens R Us: The Other in Science Fiction Cinema.

The official website for D-9 is also worth exploring. To my mind it all sounds very much like the social imaginary of a biopolitics for whom border/immigration controls function in the same manner as antibodies.. .....I won't even begin to cite precedents; you know who you are!! (i.e. the alien as liminal figure, an allergic symptom triggering hysterical attempts at control etc etc.....)