Biosocialities in the time of Corona Winter semester, academic year 2022/2023 Wednesdays between 14:00 and 16:00, Seminarhaus –SH 5.104 Don’t forget to register on OLAT: https://olat-ce.server.unifrankfurt.de/olat/auth/RepositoryEntry/16375054338/CourseNode/93668888136012 Contact details Dr. Endre Dányi Visiting professor, ‘Biotechnologies, Nature and Society’ research group Department of Sociology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main Email: danyi@em.uni-frankfurt.de Paula Stiegler Teaching assistant, ‘Biotechnologies, Nature and Society’ research group Department of Sociology, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main Email: stiegler@em.uni-frankfurt.de Course description How does biomedicine organise and maintain communities? How do such communities relate to each other and other forms of collective life? And how does an inquiry into biosocialities help us better understand global phenomena in the 21st century? This MA course addresses these questions through the example of the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on Michel Foucault’s work on biopolitics, the first few sessions aim to establish a conceptual toolkit that in subsequent sessions will be used to analyse specific aspects of the current pandemic. Possible topics include the role of scientific expertise, discourses centred around national statistics, the politics of prioritisation within a given population, the competition between pharmaceutical companies to develop a vaccine, anti-lockdown protests, and the transformation of public life (especially in urban settings). Course assessment Participation: comments on the readings and the presentation of an empirical case; Exam: a final paper of 5000 words due 1 April 2023. Covid note Though there is currently no obligation to do so, we kindly ask you to wear a medical mask during class. Please see this website for further information on Goethe University’s Covidpolicy: https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/106381063/Frequently_Asked_Questions -1- Course outline 1) Introduction (26 October 2022) What’s the purpose of this course? How can one register for it? Where does one get the readings? What are the requirements for a signature? And what are the requirements for a final mark? These are some of the questions we’ll discuss in this introductory session. 2) Biopolitics (2 November 2022) In this introductory session we discuss Michel Foucault’s understanding of biopolitics and the role populations play in it. This is going to a central concept for the rest of the semester. Required reading: Foucault 1978 Recommended reading: Lemke 2011 3) Biosocialities (9 November 2022) This session is dedicated to Paul Rabinow’s definition of biosociality as an attempt to overcome the nature/culture divide omnipresent in modern analyses of ‘the social’. We’ll focus on the Human Genome Project as an empirical example. Required reading: Rabinow 1996 Recommended reading: Hacking 2006 4) Ensembles of biosocial relations (16 November 2022) In this session we discuss the limitations of ‘gene talk’, that is, social and natural scientists’ fascination with genetics as a key to understanding humanity. We do this by looking at various exemplary cases that decentre genes (and human bodies) in biosocial inquiries – for example epigenetics and forms of multispecies coexistence. Required reading: Pálsson 2013 Recommended reading: Niewöhner & Lock 2018 5) Viral ethnography (23 November 2022) How to conceptualise living with microbes? And what challenges does this pose for ethnography as a research method? We’ll be addressing these and similar questions through an empirical example by Celia Lowe. Required reading: Lowe 2010; 2017 Recommended reading: Kirksey & Helmreich 2010 -2- 6) Living with Covid (30 November 2022) Following up on the previous session, this week we’ll focus on the challenges and opportunities Covid-19 poses for social scientists interested in biosocialities. Required reading: Fuentes 2020; Gibbon et al. 2020 Recommended readings: see Wiki page on OLAT 7) Empirical case 1: Experts (7 December 2022) The rest of the semester is dedicated to the focused discussion of various aspects of biosocialities in the time of the Covid pandemic. The first empirical case is concerned with the status of experts and expert knowledge in public discourses about the virus. Required reading: Butler et al. 2021 Recommended reading: Collins & Evans 2007 8) Empirical case 2: Numbers (14 December 2022) Related to last week’s discussion, this week we concentrate on various ways in which numbers, indicators and statistics have shaped national and other governmental responses to the Covid outbreak and by doing so defined degrees of vulnerability. Required reading: Butler 2022 Recommended reading: Rottenburg & Engle Merry 2015 9) Empirical case 3: Testing (21 December 2022) In addition to expertise and national statistics, testing may be considered as a crucial tool of governing the pandemic. What knowledges and what practices have been put to use, and with what effects? These are some of the questions we’ll be discussing in this week’s session. Required reading: Marres and Stark 2020 Recommended reading: Bowker & Star 2000 10) Empirical case 4: Vaccines (11 January 2023) How do vaccines do politics? How do pharma companies’ policies map onto national and international efforts to effectively tackle the Covid crisis? And what role time plays in the process? Required reading: Harrison et al. 2022 Recommended reading: Latour 1988 -3- 11) Empirical case 5: Conspiracy theories (18 January 2023) Arguably, one of the unique characteristics of the Covid pandemic is the wave of antilockdown protests that had brought together an unlikely amalgam of groups, some of which openly promoted conspiracy theories about the origins, intentions and effects of the virus. How to make sense of this phenomenon? Required reading: TBA Recommended reading: Boltanski 2014 12) Empirical case 6: Urban life (25 January 2023) It is often assumed that Covid has affected us all, but it hasn’t affected us the same way. What spatial patterns and transformations could be observed, especially in the context of digitalisation and urban life? Required reading: Löw and Knoblauch 2020 Recommended reading: Foucault 1984 [1967] 13) Empirical case 7: Temporalities (1 February 2023) Following on from last week’s discussion, this week we’ll be focusing on the temporal aspects of the Covid pandemic, especially ‘long Covid’. Required reading: |Rushforth et al. 2021 Recommended reading: Anderson et al. 2020 14) Concluding session (8 February 2023) The last session is dedicated to the presentation students’ final paper outlines and the discussion of good academic writing practices. -4- References Anderson, B., K. Grove, L. Rickards and M. Kearnes. (2020). Slow emergencies: Temporality and the racialized biopolitics of emergency governance. Progress in Human Geography, 44(4), 621–639. Boltanksi, L. (2014). Mysteries and Conspiracies: Detective Stories, Spy Novels and the Making of Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bowker, G. and S.L. Star. (2000). Sorting Things Out. Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bröckling, U., S. Krasmann and T. Lemke. (2011). Governmentality: current issues and future challenges. New York, NY: Routledge. Butler, J. (2022) What World is This? A Pandemic Phenomenology. New York: Columbia University Press. Collins, H. and R. Evans. (2007). Rethinking Expertise. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Butler, M., S. Farzin and M. Fuchs. (2021): PandemIcons? The Medical Scientist as Iconic Figure in Times of Crisis. Configurations, 29(4), 435-451. Foucault, M. (1978). ‘Right of Death and Power over Life’. In: History of Sexuality, Vol. 1. New York, NY: Pantheon Books, pp. 135-159. Foucault, M. (1984 [1967]): Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité, October, 1984 [“Des Espace Autres,” March 1967]. Fuentes, A. (2020). A (Bio)anthropological View of the COVID-19 Era Midstream: Beyond the Infection. Anthropology Now, 12(1), 24-32. Gibbon, S., Daly, L., Parkhurst, A., Ryan, C., Salali, G.D. & Tasker, A. (2020). Biosocial medical anthropology in the time of Covid-19: New challenges and opportunities. Medical Anthropology at UCL https://medanthucl.com/2020/04/29/biosocial-medicalanthropology-in-the-time-of-covid-19-new-challenges-and-opportunities/ Hacking, I. (2006). Genetics, biosocial groups & the future of identity. Daedalus, 135(4), 81– 95. Harrison M, K. Lancaster and T. Rhodes. (2022) ‘A matter of time’: Evidence-making temporalities of vaccine development in the COVID-19 media landscape. Time and Society. 31(1), 132-154. Kirksey, E. and S. Helmreich. (2010). ‘The emergence of multispecies ethnography’. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 545–576. Knoblauch, H. and M. Löw. (2020). Dancing in Quarantine: The Spatial Refiguration of Society and the Interaction Orders. Space and Culture, 23(3), 221–225. Latour, B. (1988). The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lemke, T. (2011). Biopolitics: An advanced introduction. New York, NY: NYU Press. Lowe, C. (2017). Viral Ethnography: Metaphors for Writing Life. RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, 1, 91–96. Lowe, C. (2010). Viral Clouds: Becoming H5N1 in Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology, 25(4), 625–649. -5- Marres, N. and D. Stark. (2020). Put to the test: For a new sociology of testing. The British Journal of Sociology, 71, 423– 443. Niewöhner, J., Lock, M. (2018). ‘Situating local biologies: Anthropological perspectives on environment/human entanglements’. BioSocieties, 13, 681-697. Pálsson, G. (2013). ‘Ensembles of biosocial relations.’ In: T. Ingold and G. Pálsson (eds.) Biosocial Becomings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 22-41. Rabinow, P. (1996). ‘Artificiality and Enlightenment: From Sociobiology to Biosociality’. In: Essays on the Anthropology of Reason. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 91-111. Rottenburg, R. and S. Merry. (2015). A world of indicators: The making of governmental knowledge through quantification. In R. Rottenburg, S. Merry, S. Park, & J. Mugler (eds.), The World of Indicators: The Making of Governmental Knowledge through Quantification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-33. Rushforth, A., Ladds, E., Wieringa, S., Taylor, S., Husain, L., & Greenhalgh, T. (2021). Long Covid - The illness narratives. Social science & medicine, 286. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34425522/ -6- Useful resources (feel free to suggest more) Covid resources #coronavirussyllabus https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dTkJmhWQ8NcxhmjeLp6ybT1_YOPhFLx9hZ43j1S7 DjE/edit The COVID Forum on Somatosphere: http://somatosphere.net/2020/covid-19-forum-introduction.html/; http://somatosphere.net/2020/covid-19-forum-ii-introduction.html/; http://somatosphere.net/2020/covid-19-forum-iii-introduction.html/ Corona thread on Allegra Lab https://allegralaboratory.net/category/thematic-threads/corona/ Witnessing Corona https://boasblogs.org/witnessingcorona/ Corona monitor (in German) https://coronamonitor.noblogs.org/ Duke Uni Press COVID syllabus: https://dukeupress.edu/Explore-Subjects/Syllabi/CovidSyllabus?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Browse%20the%20syl labus&utm_campaign=j-CovidSyllabus-Sep2021 Living with Data: Doing qualitative research on inequalities during Covid https://livingwithdata.org/resources/doing-qualitative-research-which-addresses-inequalitiesin-times-of-social-distancing/ Deborah Lupton: Doing fieldwork in a pandemic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1clGjGABB2h2qbduTgfqribHmog9B6P0NvMgVuiHZ Cl8/edit Coronavirus-Update on NDR Info (in German) https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/podcast4684.html Academic writing in English Howard S. Becker. 2007. Telling About Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Umberto Eco. 2015. How to Write a Thesis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Online excerpt here: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/ Strategies for Essay Writing (Harvard College Writing Centre): https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/beginning-academic-essay The Chicago Manual of Style Online: https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/ -7-