SPSAS Proceedings
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Transcript of SPSAS Proceedings
SPSAS Proceedings!Anais da ESPCA
organized by Raquel Velho
A Brief Introduction
The São Paulo School of Advanced Sciences on Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the Governance of the Life Sciences took place in the State University of Campinas (Brazil) on August 11-15 2014.
This five day summer school brought together leading experts from across a broad field of the social and historical sciences (including Anthropology, Sociology, Science and Technology Studies, Political Science, History of Science) from world class research and educational institutes inside and outside Brazil. A combination of students from Brazil and abroad participated in discussions relating to the rapid developments in the life and medical sciences and in the fields of genomics and biotechnology. These developments have raised important social, political, legal and ethical issues across global and in transnational contexts. We had a mixed programme of talks and workshops with an emphasis on interactive dialogue with professors and students the school responded to the urgent need to provide training and education that can address some of the pressing social and ethical issues raised by developments in the life and medical sciences.
What you have before you is a compilation of short think-pieces written by some of the students who participated in the course. Due to the heterogeneous mix of nationalities, submissions in either English or Portuguese were accepted (sometimes both!). Papers have been categorised in three different groups: • Paper-oriented: these address the students’ own work, and how it connected with the themes
explored by the summer school. • School-oriented: these address the themes most discussed at the school itself, with thoughts on
how discussions helped the student find new directions in their own research. • Free expression: these are absolutely free – they can include reviews, drawings, short fictions –
which in some way address the themes of the school.
We hope this collection of work will give readers a general idea of the range of debates and themes we tackled throughout the five days. The students would like to thank the senior academics for their stimulating lectures, and the organisers of the SPSAS for a thought-provoking event, where new networks were forged as well as new friendships.
The school was funded by FAPESP, and supported by UCL (University College London) and Unicamp (the State University of Campinas).
Event organisers: Maria Conceição da Costa, Sahra Gibbon, Marko Monteiro. Organising team: Luisa Moutinho, Michelle Alcântara Camargo, Nicole Aguilar Gayard, Rebeca Feltrin, Renan Gonçalves Leonel, Rodrigo Saraiva Cheida. Proceedings organiser: Raquel Velho
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Uma Breve Introdução
A Escola São Paulo de Ciência Avançada em Biotecnologia, Biossociabilidade e Governança em Ciências da Vida ocorreu dos dias 11 a 15 de Agosto de 2014, na Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brasil).
Esta escola de verão de cinco dias reuniu acadêmicos e especialistas de uma grande variedade disciplinar das ciências humanas e sociais (incluindo Antropologia, Sociologia, Estudos da Ciência e da Tecnologia, Ciência Política, História da ciência) de institutos de pesquisa de excelência nacionais e internacionais. Uma combinação de alunos do Brasil e do exterior participaram em discussões de temas relacionados às intensas transformações no campo da biotecnologia e das ciências da vida. Estes desenvolvimentos resultaram em questões sociais, políticas, legais e éticas importantes em contextos globais e transnacionais. Tivemos um programa misto de palestras e grupos de discussão com a ênfase em diálogos entre professores e alunos, que respondeu à necessidade de providenciar educação e aperfeiçoamento que possa falar para alguns dos problemas éticos e sociais causados pelos recentes desenvolvimentos das ciências médicas e da vida.
Neste documento, o leitor encontrará uma compilação de curtos textos da autoria de alguns alunos que participaram do curso. Devida à mistura heterogênea de nacionalidades, aceitamos submissões em inglês ou em português (e em alguns casos, ambos!). Os artigos foram categorizados em três grupos: • Orientados pelo paper: estes dão ênfase ao trabalho dos alunos, e seus vínculos com os temas
explorados pela escola de verão. • Orientados pela escola: estes dão ênfase aos temas discutidos durante os seminários, e como
estas discussões ajudaram o aluno a achar novas direções em sua própria pesquisa. • Expressão livre: estes são absolutamente livres – podem incluir críticas, desenhos, crônicas – que
abordam de alguma maneira os temas da escola.
Esperamos que esta coleção de trabalhos dê aos leitores uma idéia geral do vasto alcance de debates e temas que enfrentamos durante os cinco dias de curso. Os alunos gostariam de agradecer os professores pelas palestras empolgantes, e os organizadores da ESPCA pelo evento inspirados, onde criamos novas redes assim como novas amizades.
A escola foi patrocinada pela FAPESP, e realizada com apoio da UCL (University College London) e Unicamp (Universidade Estadual de Campinas).
Organizadores do evento: Maria Conceição da Costa, Sahra Gibbon, Marko Monteiro. Equipe organizadora: Luisa Moutinho, Michelle Alcântara Camargo, Nicole Aguilar Gayard, Rebeca Feltrin, Renan Gonçalves Leonel, Rodrigo Saraiva Cheida. Organizadora dos anais: Raquel Velho.
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Table of ContentsPaper-Oriented Think Pieces 5
Disability Film Festivals: biological identity(ies) and heterotopiaAna Cristina Bohrer Gilbert 5.......................................................................................
Células da Esperança: Um estudo antropológico sobre bancos de sangue do cordão umbilical
Angela Vasconi Speroni 7...........................................................................................The Search for Origins: Adoptees and People Conceived with Help of Donor
Negotiating Kinship and IdentitiesDébora Allebrandt 9.....................................................................................................
Drugs, Science and Mediations – Ethnography of a Research Center and the Production of Chemical Reference Substances
Eduardo Doering Zanella 11........................................................................................Mental Health as a mode of production of existence: the case of depression
Elton Corbanezi 13......................................................................................................Biotechnoscience in Context: Co-production of Science and the state in India
Jawhar CT 14..............................................................................................................Entre corpos, subjetividades e tecnologias do emagrecimento: medicalização e
governamentalidade em torno da gordura corporalJuliana Loureiro de Oliveira 16....................................................................................
A “metanarrativa inconsciente”: o caso do neodarwinismo.Leandro Modolo Paschoalotte 18................................................................................
On Their Own Terms: Dignitas and the Institutionalisation of Assisted SuicideMarcos Freire de Andrade Neves 20...........................................................................
From Depression to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Notes on Ritalin Promotion and Advertisement
Miguel Hexel Herrera 22..............................................................................................Os Desdobramentos Éticos do Tecnicismo Moderno: Um Diálogo Crítico entre Hans
Jonas e Martin HeideggerRoberta Soares Nazário da Silva 24...........................................................................
Project: Family, Health and Activism in the Age of GenomicsWaleska Aureliano 26..................................................................................................
School-Oriented Think Pieces 28 ESPCA and the Future
Amelia Hassoun 28.....................................................................................................The Public Intellectual – A short reflection on the role of the STS scholar
Christiaan de Koning 30..............................................................................................Connecting the dots: field mapping, network and community building
Gabriela Bortz 32.........................................................................................................
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Whose Dreams Are These? The Importance of Governing Beyond RiskLisa Cockburn 34.........................................................................................................
ESPCA: Reflections on Power and PoliticsMelissa Creary 36........................................................................................................
Socially Engaged STS and the Value of North-South CollaborationsRoberto Toledo 38.......................................................................................................
São Paulo Advanced School on Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the Governance of the Life Sciences, August 11th - 15th
Rodrigo Saraiva Cheida 39.........................................................................................Governing novelty: where does bureaucracy fit?
Rosanna Dent 41.........................................................................................................
Free Expression Pieces 43 Genome
Lucia Ariza 43..............................................................................................................Activism and Academia
Raquel Velho 44..........................................................................................................Review of ‘The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our
time’ (1944) by Karl Polanyi - A book for lesser social scientists?Samantha Vanderslott 46...........................................................................................
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Paper-Oriented Think Pieces
Disability Film Festivals: biological identity(ies) and heterotopia
Ana Cristina Bohrer Gilbert Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Studies
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (PACC-UFRJ) Research Fellow in the Department of Genetics
Fernandes Figueira Institute/FIOCRUZ
The topics addressed by the São Paulo School of Advanced Sciences on Biotechnology,
Biosocialities and the Governance of Life Sciences related to the recent developments in the life
and medical sciences contributed to the discussion of fundamental issues for the disability arena.
The possibility of reshaping aspects such as metabolism, organs, development, that is,
human vitality at the molecular scale as a means of enhancement goes beyond the the polarity
health-illness. In addition, a greater presence in the mass media of genetic arguments related to
aspects such as behaviour, habits, health and illnesses modify how bodies are understood and define
what authors, such as Nikolas Rose among others, named as biological citizens. These individuals 1
group themselves in communities —different 'bioscapes' — which configure new territories for 2
administering individual and collective existence. This movement results in the consolidation of
plural truths, capable of dislocating hierarchical axes and promoting loss of hegemony of the
biomedical discourse. In that sense, these groups become experts in a kind of knowledge combining
scientific knowledge and experience . 3
In this scenario, the (illusory) idea of a sole, universal, self-enclosed body, through which
individuals can identify themselves and understand others, is disarticulated and requires from all of
us to rethink the model of human body that serves as a basis for practices and discourses, including
the scientific discourse.
This is particular important when talking about disability(ies). In the case of disability film
festivals the focus is less on the geographic territory of film production than on the territory of
Rose, Nikolas (2007) The Politics of Life Itself. Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-first Century. 1
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Burri, Regula V. & Dumit, Joseph (2007) Epilogue: Indeterminate Lives, Demands, Relations: Emergent Bioscapes. In 2
Biomedicine as Culture: Instrumental Practices, Technoscientific Knowledge, and New Modes of Life. New York: Routledge. p. 223-28.
Rabinow, Paul (1992) Artificiality and Enlightenment: from Sociobiology to Biosociality. In Crary, J. & Kwinter, S. 3
(Eds.) Incorporations. New York: Zone Books. p. 234-52.
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biological identity, summarised by the category 'disability' which assembles a collection of diverse
bioscapes in contemporary biopolitics.
Disability festivals intend to be spaces of an alternative order, or heterotopic spaces, for non-
normative bodies that question ideas of normality and cultural (and discursive) sites of disability , 4
and offer new understandings of the human bodies. For that purpose, the festivals engage in the
production of new discourses of truth through which people with (and without) disabilities can 5
think of and understand themselves in a different way, remodelling their identities.
In a counter-tendency to the discourses of risk and the expanding definition of personhood
in somatic terms, characteristic of the contemporary vital politics, disability festivals define people
with disabilities not by what is different—organic, biological, physical or intellectual marks—but
by what they share with other human beings—subjectivity, feelings, dramas. However, the presence
of diagnostic categories and specific somatic realities do not permit a radical break with the
biomedical domain. It demands a reflection on the kind of narratives that are disseminated in those
events, which reveal forms of understanding people with disabilities expressed through vocabulary,
rhetoric, knowledge, morality and technologies . 6
The discourses on difference and diversity and the search for inclusion have multiple
repercussions, especially in relation to a delicate balance between 'same' and 'different'. The
plasticity of bodies and the flexibility of identities brought about by the molecular style of thought , 7
impel to questioning the sole model for the human body entangled with the definition of normal
based on the polarity disable-able bodied. This means to make explicit the frames used to perceive
the world and, consequently, disability, and to reflect on what kind of definition of personhood is
culturally shared and whether it includes human variability.
Snyder, Sharon L. & Mitchell, David T. (2006) Cultural locations of disability. Chicago and London: The University 4
of Chicago Press.
Foucault, Michel (2003) Technologies of the Self. In Rabinow, Paul & Rose, Nikolas (Eds.) The Essential Foucault: 5
Selection from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984. New York: The New Press. p. 145-69.
Miller, Peter & Rose, Nikolas (2008) Governing economic life. In Governing the Present: Administering Economic, 6
Social and Personal Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 26-52.
Fleck, Ludwik (1981) Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 7
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Células da Esperança: Um estudo antropológico sobre bancos de sangue do cordão umbilical8
Angela Vasconi Speroni Instituto de Estudos em Saúde Coletiva Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
A terapia celular desponta como a grande revolução da biomedicina do século XXI. Após o boom
dos estudos no campo da genética, o foco da comunidade científica se deslocou para as pesquisas
com células-tronco. No contexto de uma medicina que pretende-se personalizada, o protagonismo
destas células decorre das promessas de uma tecnologia regenerativa, capaz de superar os desafios
do adoecer e do envelhecimento, mediante uma fonte potencialmente ilimitada de tecidos para
transplantes. Frente aos embates éticos e legais em torno da utilização de células embrionárias , a 9
partir da década de 1980 o sangue do cordão umbilical e placentário de recém-nascidos tornou-se
fonte alternativa de células-tronco.
Em 2001, surgiram os primeiros bancos de armazenamento do cordão umbilical no Brasil,
na sequência de um movimento internacional iniciado na década de 1990, nos Estados Unidos. No
Brasil existem os bancos públicos constituintes da Rede BrasilCord e bancos privados, que
armazenam células-tronco do sangue do cordão umbilical apenas para uso do próprio doador ou de
parentes. Nos bancos públicos, as células são provenientes de doações e podem ser utilizadas por
qualquer pessoa compatível, ou pelo próprio doador e familiares, caso ainda estejam disponíveis.
Atualmente mais de cinquenta países contam com bancos deste tipo e a demanda cresce
progressivamente ao redor do mundo. Segundo informações de uma organização norte-americana
sem fins lucrativos, a Parent’s Guide to Cord Blood Foundation , atualmente existem 158 bancos 10
públicos, localizados em 36 países, e 176 bancos privados, localizados em 51 países e com mercado
Este trabalho decorre do meu projeto de pesquisa para o doutorado em Saúde Coletiva pelo Instituto de Estudos em 8
Saúde Coletiva da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (IESC/UFRJ), sob a orientação da Profa. Rachel Aisengart Menezes. O estudo é financiado pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), mediante concessão de bolsa de doutorado.
Os cientistas classificam as células-tronco humanas em três tipos: CTs totipotentes, também conhecidas como zigoto, 9
uma única célula que pode dar origem a um ser humano completo, a partir de sua implantação no útero; CTs embrionárias ou pluripotentes, que derivam da massa celular interna de um embrião, com cinco a sete dias de fecundação, e são capazes de originar todas as células e tecidos do corpo humano; e CTs adultas ou multipotentes, que se constituem em estágios posteriores do desenvolvimento, encontram-se em regiões distintas do corpo e têm capacidade de gerar subtipos celulares dos tecidos dos quais originaram (Rehen, Paulsen, 2007).
Informações disponíveis no site: http://parentsguidecordblood.org/. Acesso em: 27 mai. 2014.10
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ampliado para mais 37 países. Ao todo, estão armazenadas mais de 646 mil unidades em bancos
públicos e mais de 3 milhões e 66 mil em bancos privados.
Neste cenário, os meios de comunicação de massa consistem em veículos centrais, na
disseminação das promessas da “medicina que faz milagres” (Neiva, 2006), em referência aos
tratamentos com células-tronco. Por outro lado, pesquisadores da área mostram-se cautelosos, ao
afirmar que a maior parte dos procedimentos é ainda experimental e seus riscos permanecem
desconhecidos, e alertam para o fato de que informações sobre pesquisas e ensaios clínicos estão
sendo precocemente promovidas e divulgadas, promovendo uma extensa mobilização de doentes e
seus familiares em torno das promessas das “células da esperança” . 11
No contexto deste novo mercado da saúde, os bancos privados investem milhões no
financiamento de estudos que comprovem a eficácia de terapias com células-tronco, bem como na
divulgação de seus resultados a possíveis clientes, por médicos obstetras, via distribuição de
prospectos e folders, marketing direto em páginas na internet, até a oferta de cursos gratuitos para
gestantes e seus acompanhantes. Em contrapartida, a Agência Nacional de Vigilância em Saúde –
órgão que regulamenta este tipo de atividade no país – se esforça para desmistificar certas
mensagens, revelando os limites da tecnologia celular, no sentido de “ajudar os futuros pais a tomar
uma decisão consciente” (ANVISA, 2013).
Diante destes achados, o objetivo central do meu projeto de pesquisa consiste em apreender
crenças e expectativas que sustentam a esperança presente em discursos e demandas dos diferentes
atores sociais envolvidos – pesquisadores do campo, médicos obstetras, técnicos dos bancos e
casais que optam ou não pelo armazenamento –, mediante as seguintes fontes de dados:
levantamento da literatura científica acerca das pesquisas com células-tronco e estudos clínicos em
desenvolvimento no país; observação de eventos científicos da área; análise de notícias divulgadas
pelos meios de comunicação de massa; e entrevistas semiestruturadas.
ANVISA - Agência Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária. Conhecendo os bancos de sangue do cordão umbilical e placentário. Brasília: ANVISA, 2013. Disponível em: <http://portal.anvisa.gov.br/wps/wcm/connect/c06a45004fbdb63eb683f79a71dcc661/banco_de_cordoes_final.pdf?MOD=AJPERES >. Acesso em: 05 jun. 2013.
NEIVA, P. A medicina que faz milagres. Revista Veja, São Paulo, 23 nov. 2006. REHEN, S., PAULSEN, B. Células-tronco: O que são? Para que servem? Rio de Janeiro: Vieira & Lent,
2007.
Termo apropriado da cartilha informativa sobre bancos de sangue do cordão umbilical e placentário da Agência 11
Nacional de Vigilância Sanitária (ANVISA, 2013).�8
The Search for Origins: Adoptees and People Conceived with Help of Donor Negotiating Kinship and Identities
Débora Allebrandt Post-doctoral fellow at the Anthropology Department
UFRGS
Genetics is an idiom that underlies an important part of the discourses and decisions taken by
adoptees and people conceived with the help of a donor in the pursuit of their biological origins. In
the field research conducted for my doctoral thesis, I compare the search for origins by adoptees
with that of people conceived through medically assisted techniques and donor gametes in Brazil
and Quebec. In this thesis, I focus specifically on the case of adoptees and their strategies for
locating their biological parents and thus discovering their genetic backgrounds (Allebrandt, 2013).
Genetics related to family and health, especially in the adoptive context, can evoke polarized
positions. In the midst of debate, it becomes evident that modern science, as a producer of "truth",
plays an influential role in the desire to know one’s origins and dissect one’s genealogical roots. The
genetic argument is strong and increasingly plays a role in social identity (Bamford & Leach, 2009).
At the same time, family arrangements that appear to ignore biological and genetic factors exert
influence in another direction. The debates around health and kinship, often couched in an implicit
opposition between radical biologism and the super valorization of socio-affective relations, are
addressed and in my more extensive works. Inspired in the narratives of my interlocutors, I consider
the legal and cultural contexts of Brazil and Quebec care linked to national styles that inform not
only practices, but also the meaning of the adoptee’s search for his or her biogenetic origins (Fleck,
2008; Jasanoff, 2005).
I'm currently conducting further investigation on the issues of intimacy and privacy that
dialogue with the choice of an anonymous donor and exploring the many factors at play in this sort
of “choice” .In this sense, family configurations, life histories, and health experiences as well as
physical and behavioral similarities appear as forces that produce a dynamic perception of genes,
their importance and meaning.
Em Busca das Origens: Adotados e Pessoas Concebindas com Gametas Doados Negociando
Parentesco e Identidades
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Genética é um idioma que está subjacente a uma parte importante dos discursos e decisões tomadas
pelos adotados e de pessoas concebidas com a ajuda de um doador em busca de suas origens
biológicas. Na pesquisa de campo realizada para minha tese de doutorado, eu comparo a busca das
origens de adotados com a de pessoas concebidas com gametas doados através de técnicas de
reprodução assistida no Brasil e Quebec. Nesta tese, me concentrei especificamente sobre o caso de
adotados e suas estratégias para a localização de seus pais biológicos e, assim, descobrir suas
origens genéticas (Allebrandt de 2013).
O conhecimento genético, relacionado à família e à saúde, especialmente no contexto da
adoção, pode produzir posições polarizadas. Neste debate, torna-se evidente que a ciência moderna,
como produtor de "verdade", desempenha um papel influente no desejo de conhecer as origens e
raízes genealógicas. O argumento genético é cada vez mais forte e tem um papel na identidade
social (Bamford e Leach 2009). Ao mesmo tempo, os arranjos familiares que parecem ignorar
fatores biológicos e genéticos exercem influência em outra direção. Os debates em torno da saúde e
de parentesco, muitas vezes tomado em oposição implícita entre biologismo radical e a
supervalorização das relações sócio-afectivas, são abordados nos meus trabalhos mais extensos.
Inspirada nas narrativas dos meus interlocutores, considero os contextos legais e culturais do Brasil
e do Quebec, como ligados a estilos nacionais que informam não apenas práticas, mas também o
sentido da busca do adotado por suas origens biogenéticas (Fleck 2008, Jasanoff 2005).
Estou atualmente conduzindo uma investigação mais aprofundada sobre as questões da
intimidade e privacidade que o diálogo com a escolha de um doador anônimo e explorando os
muitos fatores em jogo neste tipo de "escolha". Neste sentido, configurações familiares, histórias de
vida e saúde experiências, bem como semelhanças físicas e comportamentais aparecem como forças
que produzem uma percepção dinâmica dos genes, sua importância e significado.
Allebrandt, D. (2013). Parenté Fluide: la quête des origines au Brésil et au Québec. Dialogue entre
parenté, droit et science. Université de Montréal. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/
1866/10210
Bamford, S., & Leach, J. (2009). Kinship and Beyond: The Genealogical Model Reconsidered
(Fertility, Reproduction and Sexuality) (p. 264). New York!; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Fleck, L. (2008). Genèse et développement d’un fait scientifique. Champs sciences (p. 280–). Paris:
Flammarion.
Jasanoff, S. (2005). Designs on nature!: science and democracy in Europe and the United States (p.
374). Princeton, N.J.!; Woodstock: Princeton University Press. �10
Drugs, Science and Mediations – Ethnography of a Research Center and the Production of Chemical Reference Substances
Eduardo Doering Zanella Master in Social Anthropology
UFRGS
My master thesis, defended on May 5, 2014, at the “Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia
Social” of the “Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul” (UFRGS), was an ethnography
developed with a collective of researchers of the health sciences, specialized on the theme "alcohol
and drugs" (ZANELLA, 2014). It is the “Centro de Pesquisa em Álcool e Drogas” (CPAD),
connected to the Department of Psychiatry, UFRGS, and located at the “Unidade Álvaro Alvim” of
the “Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre” (HCPA).
This research center is composed of a network of about forty researchers. They are mainly
psychiatrists and psychologists, although there are also professionals with formation in the fields of
social assistance, nursing, economics and biomedicine. Its activities are quite diverse, including:
organization of academic events such as symposia, conferences and seminars; training of students,
health managers, traffic officers and civilian and military police on the theme "alcohol and drugs";
organization and planning of treatment for chemical dependency at the “Hospital de Clínicas de
Porto Alegre”; and also the conduction academic researches.
The studies of this research center are developed mainly in the fields of psychiatry,
epidemiology, genetics, neuroscience and toxicology. Thus, these projects have several objectives in
relation to drugs: assess associations between psychiatric comorbidity and the use of these
substances; estimate their relationships with genetic polymorphisms; define patterns of use and
socio demographic profiles for certain regions and populations of drug users; validate instruments
for research and for clinical evaluation of drug users; indicate risk factors and economic costs
related to the practices of drug use; among many others. These researches are developed with
respect to various substances: alcohol, crack, cocaine, marijuana, synthetic drugs (especially
ecstasy) and tobacco.
My ethnographic research conducted with this collective of scientists sought to follow,
through participation, direct observation, interviews and document analysis, the processes that
involves the production of medical and scientific knowledge about drugs. Taking as its starting
point that drugs are not pre-existing entities, but substances that take a particular shape derived
from the realization of heterogeneous articulations, I proposed to describe mediation processes
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involving such substances. I intended to understand the differences and changes that are made to
these objects in the projects and activities of CPAD.
For this, I focused on two cases: a partnership between the “Departamento Estadual de
Trânsito do Rio Grande do Sul” (Detran-RS) and CPAD, and a data collection undertaken with drug
users, admitted to chemical dependency treatment at the “Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre”.
Among the considerations developed in this work, I argued that the transformation or differentiation
of the drugs "themselves" also modifies what is on their "surroundings", in such a way that nature
and society are mutually produced in processes of mediation.
In order to continue this work, my goal now is to address a project realized by a research
group that is a partner of CPAD, the Labtoxico – “Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa em Toxicologia
Analítico Laboratorial”, conducted in collaboration with the Federal Police of Brazil. It is an ample
enterprise, whose master objective is the production of chemical reference substances, in particular
cocaine hydrochloride. The production of this substance is intended to provide a uniform standard,
to be used as a parameter for establishing comparisons with the cocaine/crack apprehended from
drug trafficking. Through these comparisons, it is intended the evaluation of the specificities of the
chemical compositions of illegal drugs that are sold on the streets, in a way that will be possible to
point to their routes of circulation and thus engender the trace of the drug trafficking system.
The aim of my research is to follow this lab cocaine, since its production to its mobilization
by the Federal Police of Brazil. The purpose is to understand how the State, science and drug
trafficking are articulated and co-produced around this key substance.
References:
LATOUR, Bruno. Reassembling the social – an introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005.
ZANELLA, Eduardo. Práticas, mediações e substâncias – “álcool” e “drogas” nas atividades de um
coletivo de pesquisadores. Dissertação de mestrado defendida pelo Programa de Pós-
Graduação em Antropologia Social. UFRGS, 2014
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Mental Health as a mode of production of existence: the case of depressionElton Corbanezi
Doctoral student in Sociology at IFCH/Unicamp Unicamp
com apoio financeiro do CNPq
My research aims to analyse and relate three notions: mental health, depression and biopolitics.
From a historical and genealogical perspective, I intend to understand and problematize the
construction and the consolidation of the contemporary notion of mental health. A result of a large
and dynamic process of deinstitutionalization of mental illness, mental health quickly becomes a
device of intervention no longer restricted to the domain of pathological. Within this concept –
which is presented by the World Health Organization (WHO) as the need to constantly overcome
the normalities and the ability of self-realization in all dimensions of sociability – is the normality
itself that also represents the object of medical intervention under the pretext of prevention and
production of welfare. Thus, the “newness” of mental health can operate a former biopolitics
principle: the maximization of individual forces and the potentialization of life as a political
strategy of government itself and the population. In this context, in which mental health promotes
self-realization, the depression represents a typical problem case. First, due to the prominence given
to it in terms of prevalence in relation to other mental disorders. Second, not only due to expenses
from treatment and unproductivity, but also because depression includes in its symptomatology,
effectively, the subtraction of forces, low energy, fatigue, psychomotor retardation, feelings of
worthlessness, inability to plan for the future, to communicate, to concentrate, to make decisions, to
feel pleasure or interests – in short, the inability of individuals to perform to their own capabilities.
When considered epidemic, the depression is presented, therefore, as a fundamental refusal to the
biopolitics of mental health: at the same time it is an expression of an undisciplined body
(incapacitated, unpowered, slow), the depression deregulates population homeostasis (lack of
productivity, costs, suicide). Hence, the need to investigate the political function of government
conduct that underlies the current notion of mental health, and then understand the anti-normative
dimension of depression inside such a notion. In general and concluding lines, my hypothesis is that
the device of mental health is not established in isolation, but it is connected to a larger exterior; i.e,
the discourse directed to the constant need to manage, enhance and realize the capabilities of the
individual, which can be rooted in a neoliberal management of life that has the human capital – that
is, the capital-skill – as its largest source of value. �13
Biotechnoscience in Context: Co-production of Science and the state in India
Jawhar CT University of Hyderabad
We are living in an age where science and technology has become an inseparable part of our life,
the interrelation between science and society demands an active academic and public debate. In the
conventional way of understanding, the relationship between science and polity remain two domain
of inquiry. This standard understanding of science considered scientific knowledge as objective,
value-free, and discovered by experts. It keeps aloof from the contextual analysis of science and
technology, so the politics and political actors have nothing to do with science and technology. In
the last three decades, many historical and sociological studies about science and technology shows
that society and culture have a great influence on the shaping of science and technology. The
theoretical and empirical studies of Science and Technology Studies (STS) shows this influence in
the context of different technologies. Understanding the interface between genetic and society is an
important access strip to understand the relationship between science and the state. This work is an
attempt to understand political sociology of biotechnoscience in the framework of Science and
Technology Studies (STS).
In this project I will address the question of co-production of knowledge and the state in 12
the context of india in general and the discourse of democracy, citizenship and governance in the
context of biotechnology in particular. It also pose question on role of scientific knowledge and
technological artefact both embeds and is embedded in social identities, institutions, representations
and discourses. The broader objective of the present project is to map the interface between science,
technology and politics in general and genetics in particular.
The introduction of GM technology in India was celebrated as a shift from green revolution
to gene revolution. The wider debate over Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in India started
after the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) under the Ministry of Environment and
Forests gave its clearance for the production and consumption of BT brinjal. BT cotton has been on
the market for some years and the anticipated release of BT brinjal, the first GM food has seen a
confrontation between government agencies and civil society groups. The civil society groups
" According to Jasanoff, (2004) “Science, in the co-productionist framework, is understood as neither a 12simple reflection of the truth about nature nor an epiphenomenon of social and political interests. Rather, co-production is symmetrical in that it calls attention to the social dimensions of cognitive commitments and understandings, while at the same time underscoring the epistemic and material correlates of social formations” (Jasanoff: (2004) States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order).
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vehemently opposed the release of GM foods. The promoters say that Bt Brinjal will be bliss for
small farmers because it is highly insect-resistant and by increasing yields it is more economical
and very much cost-effective. It will have minimal environmental impact. On the other hand, those
who oppose BT brinjal cautions about its possible adverse impact on human health and bio-safety,
livelihoods and biodiversity.
As a response to the outcry of different stakeholders like environmental activists, scientists,
non-governmental organisations, farmers, etc, Ministry of Environment and Forest decided to
conduct public consultations across the country before taking a final decision on this issue.
Different stakeholders like farmers, scientists, agricultural experts, farmers’ organizations,
consumer groups, citizen forums, NGOs/CBOs, Government officials, media, seed suppliers,
traders, doctors, lawyers, etc. took part in the consultations and expressed their imaginaries and
concerns about the introduction of this new technology. As a result, the government of India put a
moratorium on the commercial use of GM foods. The recent debate on introduction of
Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRIA) Bill, 2013 trigged debate on the whether is
for promotion of biotech or for regulate it.
The development of biotechnology discourses trigged the political imagination of India.
This debate questioned the conventional understanding of science, state and society relation. When
genetically modified food prepared its way to the our dinning table we come across ‘everyday
democracy’ – the way we govern ourselves through the choices, commitments and connections of
daily life. The new development in the biotechnoscience evoked the question of practices in the
production, consumption and distribution of knowledge.
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Entre corpos, subjetividades e tecnologias do emagrecimento: medicalização e governamentalidade em torno da gordura
corporalJuliana Loureiro de Oliveira
Mestranda do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Este breve resumo apresenta algumas questões que estão sendo produzidas em minha pesquisa de mestrado, que tem como tema a produção de expertise médica-científica sobre gordura e emagrecimento e a relação dessa expertise com o público leigo através de livros de aconselhamento ou de autoajuda. Além da análise desses livros, venho me dedicando ao acompanhamento e observação de blogs, notícias, grupos e páginas de Facebook voltados para dietas, emagrecimento, medicamentos inibidores de apetite e outros assuntos relativos ao peso e a gordura corporal, além do acompanhamento de publicações e páginas mantidas por pessoas ou grupos que buscam criticar o que consideram uma preocupação excessiva com tais questões. O intuito com isso é pensar as publicações e interações dos participantes dessas redes, em especial os seus relatos sobre as relações que empreendem com as tecnologias de emagrecimento – entendidas aqui tanto como discursos e prescrições médicas-científicas quanto medicamentos, cirurgias, dietas e programas alimentares, etc. Suponho que a produção dessas tecnologias de emagrecimento esteja diretamente relacionada a um processo de biomedicalização e patologização da gordura que se insere em um processo mais amplo de governo dos corpos – gordos e não gordos. Assim, tomo como referencial teórico os estudos sobre governamentalidade, biopoder e medicalização, os Estudos Sociais da Ciência e Tecnologia, estudos de gênero e estudos da gordura (Fat Studies). Tomando estes referenciais, estou interessada em compreender como foram constituídas, especialmente nas últimas décadas, uma série de instrumentos e tecnologias que se propunham a pensar e administrar legitimamente as pessoas consideradas gordas, seja individual ou coletivamente – através de diagnósticos, categorizações, grupos terapêuticos, publicações, campanhas governamentais, etc. Ao falar de instrumentos e tecnologias, adoto um sentido amplo, a fim de incluir tanto ferramentas, escalas, dispositivos de medição, etc. quanto maneiras de pensar, técnicas intelectuais, modos de autoanálise, etc. Assim, aproximando-me de autores dos ESCT e dos estudos sobre biomedicalização, entendo que não há uma separação entre os objetos e materiais concretos e o plano das ideias, de forma que esses diferentes elementos estão atuando conjuntamente na produção de diferentes modos de governo em torno da gordura corporal. A partir de Miller e Rose (2012), insiro meu projeto em um interesse mais amplo em diferentes instrumentos e processos de inscrição que ajudam a transformar determinadas questões, anseios e preocupações em problemas passíveis de serem analisados e gerenciados de diferentes formas, a partir de lugares e agentes distintos. Estes podem ser tanto peritos ou profissionais reconhecidos, quanto grupos de pressão, políticos, líderes corporativos, meios de comunicação, etc. que ajudam a dar existência a esses “problemas” que “devem ser” conhecidos e governados. Nesse sentido, há uma associação entre as racionalidades – entendidas enquanto estilos de pensamento ou modos de tornar a
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realidade pensável de determinada maneira – e as tecnologias que tornam essa realidade maleável, aberta ao cálculo e à programação. No caso do emagrecimento, acredito que uma série de experts e espaços são investidos no sentido de gerenciar as subjetividades e os corpos de indivíduos considerados gordos ou que “podem vir a ser” lidos/entendidos como gordos. Muitos desses indivíduos investem boa parte de suas vidas para adequarem-se às normas e prescrições produzidas por tais experts e espaços, mobilizando uma diversidade de elementos para garantir o seu emagrecimento. Ao observar alguns grupos online frequentados por muitos indivíduos engajados em tal processo, além de entender que o desejo de emagrecer atravessa diferentes segmentos sociais, mobilizando especialmente mulheres, percebi que, ao contrário do que eu imaginava inicialmente, a relação com as tecnologias de emagrecimento não se restringe a casos de sofrimento, frustração e angústia. Pelo contrário, os relatos que observei mostram também histórias de “vitórias” e alegrias com o “conseguir emagrecer”. A partir destes relatos, lembrei das teorizações de Donna Haraway (2009), que assume uma posição crítica em relação à retórica radicalmente contrária às tecnologias e a “tecnocultura”, como se essas fossem, exclusivamente, tecnologias de dominação e opressão. Ao falar do humano como um amontoado de “relacionalidades situadas com organismos, ferramentas e muito mais”, a autora chama atenção para as possibilidades criativas e os prazeres envolvidos nessas relações estabelecidas entre seres humanos e coisas/artefatos tecnológicos. Com isso, ela não nega as relações de poder em jogo nos processos de tecnologização e biomedicalização da vida e o próprio conceito foucaultiano de biopoder, mas assume que este conceito foi “retrabalhado, modificado, tecnologizado e instrumentalizado de diferentes modos” a partir do tecnobiocapital. O cenário analisado parece dar pistas da forte ambivalência em torno das tecnologias de emagrecimento. Utilizando as noções de biopoder e normalização dos corpos parece inegável que há uma produção e busca por adequação a um determinado padrão corporal extremamente normativo e restritivo. No entanto, me parece impossível negar que as associações com essas tecnologias envolvem também prazeres e alegrias, sensações de controle e domínio sobre o seu corpo e sua existência. Assim, minha pesquisa é atravessada pela questão sobre como realizar uma abordagem que fale tanto do inegável controle exercido pelas tecnologias de emagrecimento, quanto das demandas e escolhas de pessoas envolvidas com tais tecnologias e que querem, sim, se adequar a determinadas normas e intervir sobre seus corpos.
Referências: HARAWAY, Donna. Manifesto ciborgue: ciência, tecnologia e feminismo-socialista no final do século
XX. In: HARAWAY, Donna. HUNZRU, Hari. TADEU, Tomaz. Antropologia do ciborgue: as vertigens do pós-humano. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica Editora, 2009.
MILLER, Peter. ROSE, Nikolas. Governando o presente: gerenciamento da vida econômica, social e pessoal. São Paulo: Paulus, 2012.
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A “metanarrativa inconsciente”: o caso do neodarwinismo.Leandro Modolo Paschoalotte
Mestrando em Ciências Sociais Unesp
com apoio financeiro da FAPESP
Muitos pensadores contemporâneos já se sublevaram contra a ideia/discurso conhecido como “pós-
moderno” – como Bruno Latour (1994[1991]). Todavia, alguns pensadores respeitados se puseram a
refletir sobre as alterações iniciadas na virada da década de 1960 para 1970 e que consubstanciaram
a chamada “pós-modernidade”. David Harvey (1996), por exemplo, numa abordagem com especial
atenção aos aspectos econômicos e a políticos analisou aquilo a que chamou de “condição pós-
moderna”. F. Jameson (1997), por sua vez, deu maior atenção às transformações da lógica cultural
do capitalismo tardio, o chamado “pós-modernismo”.
Discorrendo criticamente sobre os autores que se agruparam em locus equidistantes do
pensamento moderno que tradicionalmente se soergueu epistêmica e ontologicamente através de
grandes narrativas – como o caso do estruturalismo, do marxismo, do positivismo etc. –, Harvey e
Jameson nos alerta: “Não é possível descartar a metateoria [e a metanarrativa]; os pós-modernistas
apenas a empurram para o subterrâneo, onde ela continua a funcionar com uma ‘efetividade agora
inconsciente’.” (JAMESON, 1996 In. HARVEY, 1996, p.112). Sendo assim, perguntamo-nos: qual
a metanarrativa que hoje funciona como uma “efetividade agora inconsciente”?
Não é nenhuma novidade que as Ciências Humanas, ao arriscarem explicações para o lugar
do Homem no mundo, buscam ferramentas metodológicas nas Ciências da Natureza, sobretudo nas
denominadas biociências – biologia, fisiologia, medicina etc. Aliás, a biologia social foi um dos
primeiros métodos de sistematização na compreensão das sociedades ainda no final do século
XVIII. Recentemente, o cenário editorial e científico internacional vem oferecendo estudos que
apresentam justamente essa perspectiva, ora pela biologia evolutiva, ora pelas neurociências, ora
ainda pela genética comportamental, em suma, pelas Life Sciences contemporâneas de um modo
geral.
Nesse sentido, atentamos para uma das investidas biocientíficas sobre as questões que
tradicionalmente, ao longo do século XX, constituíram objetos das Ciências Humanas. Nascida no
interior da própria Biologia, com o livro Sociobiology: the new synthesis (1975), de Edward O.
Wilson e The selfish gene de Richard Dawkins (1976), a Sociobiologia pode ser vista como a
primeira voz neodarwinista a falar em alto e bom som sobre os humanos. Com o objetivo
primordial de construir uma nova síntese da evolução do comportamento social dos animais –
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incluindo os humanos – tendo o gene como objeto por excelência da seleção natural, a ciência de
Wilson deu corpo, na última quadra do século XX, a uma grande narrativa capaz de imprimir
significados totalizantes na construção das acepções e representações ontológicas das ciências da
vida.
Exemplos desse empreendimento pode ser visualizado contemporaneamente ao menos em
três áreas relativamente distintas das ciências da vida, são elas: a própria biologia evolucionista,
donde o premiado biocientista norte-americano Jared Diamond, aparece como um de seus maiores
expoentes. A psicologia evolucionista representada pelo canadense com formação em linguística
Steven Pinker, hoje é a maior herdeira da sociobiologia. E, por último, as neurociências, “como se
baseia na biologia evolucionaria”, diz o neurocientista português Antônio R. Damásio, “situa a
consciência em um contexto histórico, adequado a organismos em transformação evolucionaria pela
seleção natural.” (DAMÁSIO, 2013, p.34). Todos esses pensadores e suas áreas afins se assentam,
cada qual ao seu modo e rigor, na grande narrativa evolucionista neodarwinista para soerguer suas
teorias e figurações universais sobre o humano.
Deste modo, ao se reconhecer que as biociências, sobretudo as matizadas na metanarrativa
neodarwinista, nunca deixaram de explicar holisticamente o desenvolvimento e a evolução humana.
Acreditamos na hipótese de que, na medida em que as Humanidades se tornaram “pós-
modernamente” hostis a essa modalidade de reflexão – especialmente durante a década de 70 e 80 –
elas se desarmaram e proporcionaram um terreno aberto para as metanarrativas naturalistas;
justamente no período em que o projeto neodarwinista, sobretudo aquele capitaneado pela
Sociobiologia, emergiu com força no interior das Ciências da Natureza. Donde podemos deduzir
hipoteticamente, portanto, que as metateorias/metanarrativas que passaram a funcionar como
representações inconscientes naquele período foram construídas e consolidadas pelas Ciências da
Natureza, especialmente pelas ciências da vida.
Referencias:
DAMÁSIO, A. R. E o cérebro criou o Homem. São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 2013.
HARVEY, D. Condição pós-moderna: uma pesquisa sobre as origens da mudança cultural. São
Paulo: Edições Loyola, 1996.
JAMESON, F. Pós-modernismo: a lógica cultural do capitalismo tardio. São Paulo: Ed. Ática, 1997
LATOUR, B. Jamais fomos modernos. Rio de Janeiro: Editora 34,1994.
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On Their Own Terms: Dignitas and the Institutionalisation of Assisted Suicide
Marcos Freire de Andrade Neves PPGAS/UFRGS
Established in 1998 by the lawyer Ludwig A. Minelli, “Dignitas – To live with dignity – To die with
dignity” is a nonprofit organization based in Forch, Switzerland, which, alongside other projects 13
and attributions, also makes it possible for its members to pursue an assisted suicide (AS). Besides
the Swiss headquarters, the organization has opened its first and so far only branch office, in
Hannover, Germany, from where it provides information to prospective new members, an also acts
as a lobbying force towards the legalization of said practice.
The organization’s activities are legally backed by a Swiss national legislation that vetoes
the assistance of a third party in a suicide attempt only when there are “selfish reasons” behind the
intent , such as the possibility of monetary gain through the requestor’s death. Thus, by fitting into 14
the category of an “uninterested” support group, due to its nonprofit nature, Dignitas may provide
its services to those who fulfill at least one of three main criteria, regardless of nationality. The
requestor must: (1) have been diagnosed with a disease that lies outside therapeutic possibilities –
the so-called terminal illnesses –; (2) to suffer from an incapacitating physical condition; or (3) to
be in unbearable pain. Only these medical diagnoses authorize the recourse to assisted suicide,
which, ultimately, guarantees the requestor’s right to end his or her life – an option that is not
available otherwise. Committed to this idea and actively promoting it in debates that stretch beyond
Swiss borders, the organization proposes the availably of access to AS to all of those in full
possession of their mental faculties, thus disconnecting it from medical diagnoses that confirm a
chronic or terminal illness.
The main objective is to analyze the so called “provisional green light”. This dispositive
indicates a provisional authorization to carrying out an AS that will only effectively take place after
" “Dignitas – Menschenwürdig leben – Menschenwürdig sterben”, in the original German.13
" According to Article 115 of the Swiss Criminal Code (StGB), “Those who, by selfish reasons, either 14facilitate or help somebody’s attempt at suicide, and in case such suicide or its attempt takes place, shall be convicted with a sentence of no more than 5 years in prison or due to pay a fine”. Therefore, the practice of assisted suicide (AS) is backed by a legal interpretation that exempts a nonprofit organization from any “selfish reasons”. In order to assure this, however, several bureaucratic and procedural stages must be observed before the AS takes place.
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a series of medical and bureaucratic stages. Upon starting the procedures that would eventually lead
to the AS, the member should not only provide recent medical evaluations proving his or her current
health condition, but also go through two physical and psychiatric consultations as a way of
establishing the lack of external pressures of any kind – thus fulfilling the “selfish reasons” clause,
such as the pressure a relative might exert in order to obtain certain financial advantages through
the deceased’s heirloom. If, on the one hand, the many stages aim at ensuring that the member’s
decision is not influenced by external pressures and that he or she fulfills the previously mentioned
criteria, on the other they impose a prolonged temporality between the first contact and the assisted
suicide per se that implies the absence of a decision-making impulse. This factor denotes a non-
impulsive suicide, meticulously, bureaucratically and financially planned, distancing it from the
classic notions revolving on the act itself.
Moreover, the “provisional green light” is configured as a life-validating mechanism
separating those lives that deserve to be lived from those that may be ended. A sorting mechanism
that determines which lives the State, through Dignitas and through the establishing of legal and
medical criteria, allows to be extinct, a logic that raises a series of questions regarding the
ownership of body and life, the conception of a self-determining individual, subject of his or her
own decisions. These questions are found in the intersection of medical, political, religious and
moral arguments – many of which were discussed at ESPCA/SPSAS. For most of the members, to
merely receive the “provisional green light” is the end goal, and not the carrying out of the assisted
suicide per se. According to data provided by the organization, 70% of the members who have been
given the green light have never again been in touch with Dignitas, and only 13% went through
with the AS.
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From Depression to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): Notes on Ritalin Promotion and Advertisement
Miguel Hexel Herrera MSc in Social Anthropology
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul com apoio financiero do CNPq
This ongoing thesis examines the promotion and advertisement for Ritalin (a trade name for
methylphenidate) from a science and technology studies (STS) perspective. Ritalin is a
psychostimulant medication used for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD). ADHD is one of the most common childhood disorders and can continue through
adolescence and adulthood. Symptoms include
hyperactivity, difficulty staying focused, paying attention
and difficulty controlling behavior. The worldwide
prevalence estimates of attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder (ADHD) are highly variable. Literature reviews
have reported rates ranging from as low as 1% to as high
as 20% among school-age children (Rohde et al. 2011).
Between 2002 and 2006, the Brazilian production of
methylphenidate raised 465 per cent (Itaborahy, Ortega,
2013) and between 2004 and 2013, the consumption raised
775 per cent (Barros, 2014). The epidemiological data
shows that there was a considerable increase in
methylphenidate usage and expansion of its use by healthy
individuals to enhance cognitive functions, especially in
within academic circles. As observed by anthropologist
Fabíola Rohden, one way to understand this complex phenomenon is to shed light on the “(…)
interaction of the multiple actors in the scene, such as researchers, clinicians, the pharmaceutical
industry, the media and consumers and the intense interplay of interests and outlook of the world
involved in the discourse that is being produced. (p. 622, 2013). Aspects such as scientific
legitimacy, economic and political interests, professional conflicts and gender relations encompass
an intricate game of tensions that give rise to unanticipated outcomes. (Rohden, p.622, 2013)
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Figure 1. Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol.18, No.2, 1956.
The current study aims to examine how Ritalin, originally promoted by Ciba as a mild
antidepressant, became the drug of first choice to treat
ADHD (known at the time as hyperactivity or minimal
brain dysfunction). This dissertation examines the
development of methylphenidate treatment and the
expansion of the diagnostic category of ADHD through
the analysis of pharmaceutical advertisements for Ritalin
in UK, US and Canadian medical journals published
between 1956 and 2000’s. Most of the journals were
retrieved from Portal de Períodicos da Capes and 15
MEDLINE searches. I selected a sample of 54 ritalin
advertisements to analyze, based mainly on image
quality. These pharmaceutical advertisements show that
this psychotropic was originally marketed for depression
and mood disorders, fatigue, lethargy and narcolepsy. By
the end of the 60´s, Ritalin is being shown – and
renowned – as an effective treatment for “hyperactive
children”. Ilina Singh (2007) suggests that when we consider pharmaceutical advertisement
material as a legitimate documental source, it is possible contributing to retrieve historical aspects
of a specific drug, which might otherwise go unnoticed, since this type of material is characterized
as an essential component in the persuasive arsenal of those companies.
References:
BARROS, Denise. As representações sociais do uso do metilfenidato: do tratamento ao aprimoramento cognitivo. Tese (Doutorado em Saúde Coletiva). Instituto de Medicina Social, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 2014.
ITABORAHY, Claudia; ORTEGA, Fernando. O metilfenidato no Brasil: uma década de publicações. Ciênc. saúde coletiva, Rio de Janeiro, v. 18, n. 3, Mar. 2013.
ROHDE, Luis, Augusto; et al. Transtorno de déficit de atenção/hiperatividade. Revist Bras. Psiquiatr. São Paulo, v. 22, supl. 2. 2000.
ROHDE, L. A., et al. The Worldwide Prevalence of ADHD: A Systematic Review and Metaregression Analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry 164(6):942-948. 2011.
ROHDEN, Fabíola. Gender differences and the medicalization of sexuality in the creation of sexual dysfunctions diagnosis. CLAM. Sexuality, Culture and Politics - A South American Reader. 2013. Disponível em: clam.org.br/uploads/publicacoes/book2/35.pdf
SINGH, Ilina. Bad boys, good mothers and the 'miracle' of Ritalin. Science in Context, 15(4), 577-603. 2002. ___________. Not just naughty: 50 years of stimulant drug advertising. Medicating Modern America (eds.
A. Toon & E. Watkins), NYU Press, 131-155. 2007.
" www.periodicos.capes.gov.br15�23
Figure 2. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Vol. 44, No.1, 1958.
Os Desdobramentos Éticos do Tecnicismo Moderno: Um Diálogo Crítico entre Hans Jonas e Martin Heidegger
Roberta Soares Nazário da Silva Aluna do Programa de Pós-Graduação de Filosofia
UFPE com apoio financeiro da CAPES/PROCAD
A curiosidade dos cientistas/pesquisadores os levaram a realizar descobertas imprescindíveis para a
vida moderna (motor a combustão, computadores, máquina de raio X, satélites, celulares, vacinas,
aeronaves etc.). No entanto, muitos destes inventos nem sempre foram usados de uma maneira
adequada, trazendo grandes prejuízos para o homem e o meio ambiente. E para que não o crivo,
sobre o que deve ou não ser pesquisado e comercializado seja imparcial, outras áreas do
conhecimento se detiveram igualmente a analisar o problema. Logo, a tarefa de criticar os modelos
científicos também se tornou papel dos cientistas sociais, educadores, historiadores e antropólogos.
Ao cientista estrito, aquele das ciências duras, não pertence unicamente mais o fato de pensar sobre
o tipo de prática que realiza.
Por conseguinte, este tema passou a pertencer também à esfera da filosofia, e ela se deteve a
analisar as diversas mudanças que ocorreram em um curto período de tempo, dentro do processo
histórico da civilização. Deste modo, todo esse avanço tecnológico gerado através de uma pretensão
científica sem parâmetros, cujas produções em sua grande maioria são desconhecidas dos
consumidores finais, criou um cenário em que se torna categórico pensar o problema gerado pelo
impacto da técnica moderna. E, como dito anteriormente, devido essas alterações acontecerem
dentro do processo histórico, em um intervalo muito curto de tempo, só mostra a necessidade de
uma análise filosófica acerca desses dois determinantes que fazem parte da vida do homem
moderno: a ciência e a técnica moderna.
Portanto, a ideia principal deste trabalho está centrada na tentativa de analisar o fenômeno
da técnica moderna e seus desdobramentos, contrapondo dois dos autores contemporâneos da
técnica de maior relevância: Martin Heidegger e Hans Jonas. É quase improvável que grande parte
das pesquisas nesta área, quando estudadas ou examinadas, não contenham conceitos ou, que se não
se encontrem, categoricamente, a posição filosófica do alemão Martin Heidegger. Do mesmo modo,
quando se pondere sobre questões ecológicas emergenciais, da determinação de um juízo de valor
sobre o agir do homem na natureza, ou mesmo sobre uma ética mais condizente para o
comportamento da modernidade não se discorra sobre o filósofo Hans Jonas.
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Martin Heidegger se destaca na análise deste fenômeno, pela abordagem em sua obra “A
Questão da Técnica” de 1953 ou, pelo menos é nela, que mais expressamente o pensador retrata o
problema da técnica. Hans Jonas, por sua vez, tem em “O Princípio Responsabilidade” publicado
em 1979, seu principal livro, uma maneira diferencial de analisar o fenômeno da técnica moderna,
ao pretender a atualização das éticas filosóficas para a sociedade contemporânea. Um dos pontos
em que ambos pensadores concordam, é de que a técnica moderna muito se distancia daquela dos
tempos remotos, e é justamente essa mudança que deve ser melhor examinada, pois o que se
encontra circunscrito, nessa alteração, é a própria mudança do homem.
Essa ameaça que a técnica moderna configura, como dito antes, é tema de pesquisa em
variadas áreas do conhecimento humano. Desde os estudos mais diretivos como, por exemplo,
sobre os impactos gerados pelos agrotóxicos no solo e na saúde humana, os poluentes e a camada
de ozônio ou sobre o melhor uso dos recursos naturais não renováveis, que se examinam meios
práticos para que o homem se relacione de uma maneira menos agressiva com a natureza. E esses
estudos só comprovam que o agir humano tem um poder imprevisível e de grande alcance.
Em suma, a pesquisa tem por intenção suscitar uma maior ponderação sobre a questão da
técnica moderna. Mesmo que se tenha a noção de que, contemporaneamente, esse tema é mais
discutido dentro das mais variadas áreas acadêmicas, talvez pelo grau de relação que tem que o
homem moderno, ela necessite ser melhor e mais refletida. Entre as questões em que os dois autores
concordam, está o fato de que a técnica possui o caráter de ser ambígua. Já que fenômeno tem por
característica ser ambivalente (benéfico e maléfico), não se pode tomá-lo como neutral, o perigo
decorre do desconhecimento dessa relação. E, por ter o seu aspecto positivo indissociável do
negativo, demanda que se faça uma análise mais pertinente e criteriosa.
Prontamente, tomando por base estes trabalhos realizados em torno desta temática, a
relevância de traçar um comparativo sobre a disposição da interpretação crítica do Heidegger e a
proposta ética do filósofo Hans Jonas, que aborda uma posição de responsabilidade, se dá
exatamente por trabalharem o tema de forma bastante característica. E, através de indagações
adquiridas destas leituras, as visões dos autores podem corroborar para uma indicação de uma nova
postura diante dessa realidade.
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Project: Family, Health and Activism in the Age of GenomicsWaleska Aureliano
PhD in Social Anthropology State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ)
My post-doctoral research project has as main objective to investigate the trajectories of families
affected by rare and hereditary degenerative diseases in Brazil. The purpose is to analyze how, within
local perceptions of health disorders of genetic origin, notions of family and kinship, reproduction
and health, risk and responsibility operated, and which obstacles, difficulties and dilemmas these
families faced in the pursuit of diagnosis, treatment and social insertion.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an illness is considered rare when it affects
fewer than sixty-five in one hundred thousand people. Despite the lack of consensus as to the exact
number, it is believed that between five and eight thousand rare diseases exist in the world today, of
which eighty per center are genetic, and affect eight per center of the world population. In Brazil it is
estimated that 15,000,000 people suffer from rare diseases, of which a considerable part have neither
cure nor treatment, show severe morbidity and incapacitating disability, and, in some cases, lead to
premature death.
As research progressed, I made contact with an association of patients affected by ataxia in
Rio de Janeiro. Ataxia is a rare form of degenerative disease that affects speech and movement,
causes progressive paralysis of the body and for which there is no cure or treatment. From this contact
with the association I also became interested in the ways that families affected by rare diseases are
politically organized in Brazil, in search for treatment and health care, and how in this process they
building relationships with biomedical, scientific, and legal systems, as well as with the State.
Three questions have become relevant during my fieldwork and make me think about the
meanings and uses that genetic technologies acquire for these families:
1. The manner in which illness experience was conceptualized in the family before they know its
genetic and hereditary factors: Contact with two extensive families has revealed that perception
of the disease is not always understood as hereditary. For members of one of the families, with
relatives spread around the country, the symptoms of Machado Joseph disease were similar to
diseases common in old age, such as arthritis or rheumatism. References to grandparents, great
aunts and uncles, or even parents who died at an advanced age, led to the idea that family
members would suffer more as they getting older, eventually becoming paralytic. For other
family, the proximity of various relatives affected by the same symptoms led them to believe that
there was a health problem in the family; however, they did not see the causes of symptoms as
genetic.
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2. The manner in which the knowledge about genetics causes of family’s disease affected their
perception of health and reproduction, considering the notion of risk present in medical
explanations: For both families, the knowledge of the disease’s genetic and hereditary origins
came after a family member was formally diagnosed, after seek for treatment to imbalance. This
information, however, did not lead other family members, especially those without symptoms, to
undergo predictive testing or genetic counseling. For those who developed symptoms, testing
became an important way to legitimize absence from work and facilitate the retirement process.
Regarding the risk of inheriting or transmitting the Machado Joseph gene, asymptomatic
members of the two families, affirmed that they did not want to know their condition by
predictive tests, due to the absence of healing treatment for the disease. Nonetheless, they
acknowledged the risk and take certain actions based on the possibility of coming down with the
disease, such as seeking financial autonomy through stable employment offering a health
insurance plan.
3. In which way the fear of the disease is managed, and the way hope appears in this process: So,
fear of the disease is managed in ways other than predictive testing, which some researches have
shown to be rarely sought by asymptomatic members of families with rare diseases. This does not
mean that these people were not concerned about the risk of coming down with a rare disease;
instead, it is indicative of other manners of problematizing the risk and of managing it through
life choices, like the aforementioned employment and family planning strategies. The hope that a
cure will be found in the near future was also present. Although this hope sometimes indicated a
religious faith, as is the case with some members of the families researched, it was always that
scientific research would discover a cure, not that a miracle would take place. On the other hand,
hope gives birth to a moral project, capable of making a life possible not only in the future, but
right now in the present.
Finally, up to this point, I have been concerned about the variability and diversity of perceptions and
forms of engagement possible to these families members, based on the knowledge about their genetic
disease. This led me to rethink the concepts of biosociality and bioidentities (RABINOW, 1999;
ROSE, 2013), and including the need to take into account certain markers of social difference, such
as class, age, gender and race, in the analyses of people living with rare diseases.
References:
RABINOW, Paul. “Artificialidade e Iluminismo: da sociobiologia à biossociabilidade”. IN: RABINOW, P. Antropologia da Razão. Rio de Janeiro. Relumé Dumara, 1999.
ROSE, Nikolas. A política da própria vida: biomedicina, poder e subjetividade no século XXI. São Paulo: Paulus, 2013.
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School-Oriented Think Pieces
ESPCA and the FutureAmelia Hassoun
MSc Digital Anthropology University College London
ESPCA was full of activist-researchers, invested not only in rigorous scholarship but also in
bringing a better future into being. In fact, the school as a whole was fascinatingly future-oriented,
with many examining how the future is imagined and maintained through biological and medical
technologies. I found it extremely refreshing how far away the ivory tower felt from these engaged,
concerned discussions of the very real implications of technologically-fuelled imaginaries for both
scientists and non-scientists.
Stephen Hilgartner suggested that we take seriously claims of revolutionary
biotechnological change, in order to examine how the unimaginable becomes imaginable. He
encouraged us to ask: How do these imagined worlds relate to self-understandings of societies?
How do you study governance of the emerging and the emergence of governance at the same time?
From an STS perspective this line of inquiry is especially interesting, motivated as STS has recently
been to evaluate how non-scientists shape the ground upon which scientific discovery and discourse
take place. Knowledge and the social order take shape together. Visions of the future are
conditioned significantly by existing institutional logics and history. Perhaps most importantly,
imaginaries are regulatory mechanisms that imagine a status quo that has power and acts.
In a similar vein, Marko Monteiro stressed that sociotechnical imaginaries are
fundamentally material practices, with material effects on power. He asked how we can analyze
disease research as it co-constructs bodies, technologies, policies, and products related to science
and health. Despite, for example, the consensus in population genetics that biological race is non-
existent, race continues to be a central concept in disease research, policy, and practice.
A fundamental characteristic of the future is uncertainty. As Sahra Gibbon argued through
her work on breast cancer genomics, patients must cope with information of uncertain clinical
significance arising from uncertain technologies. These predictive technologies evoke futures and
mandate choices in the present based upon uncertain futures, driven by clinical invocations of risk.
Jane Calvert, too, pointed out how futures can have real effects on the present, through a
discussion of how systems biologists attempt to make biology more predictable, life more
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calculable. Vitally, she stressed the lack of a dichotomy between science and society: how “dirty,
unruly” living systems, as one of her informants put it, are always present and usually somewhat
unpredictable. She highlighted the tension in the life sciences between uncertainty and ambiguity on
one hand and transformative potential on the other. The more time goes on, the more predictable the
trajectory of a technology becomes, but the less power we have to control it. We must, she argued,
increase the diversity of voices that can contribute to a discussion of futures being built by the life
sciences. Through, for example, speculative design combining art and science, we can open up and
create contestable futures rather than subscribing to a false, inevitable teleology.
Hilgartner and Rapp proved to be extremely interesting bookends. Rayna Rapp concluded
with an imperative to challenge notions of medical progress, slowing medicalization and
introducing complexity into systems. She asked: what could predictive genetic technologies
potentially do to populations with “abnormal” (non-normative) genetic conditions resulting from
mutations? We are caught in a double telos, whereby cultural values of perfection and early
intervention (and resulting eugenic impulses) clash with acceptance of all kinds of heterogeneity of
groups in a “differentially fragmented” society. There is no doubt that biological and social forces
are inseparably entangled. Technologies have social lives. Local and international media as well as
national traditions and narratives, as Addi Bharadwaj pointed out, shape the form that regulation
takes. The old, always and inevitably, dictates the forms of the new.
I was inspired, as well, by many of the student presentations addressing similar issues and
encouraging us to diversify imaginations of the future and ideas of progress. In short, I hope that the
work done by the individuals at ESPCA on how new medical and biological technologies shape and
are shaped by imaginaries of the future in very material ways can affect scholarship in other fields,
prompting the same kinds of scrutiny of all promissory technological fantasies.
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The Public Intellectual – A short reflection on the role of the STS scholar
Christiaan de Koning Maastricht University
‘Biotechnology, Biosocialities, and the Governance of the Life Sciences’ were the central themes
during the five-day summer school that took place at the State University of Campinas, Brazil.
Around 100 Students and scholars from a wide range of universities and countries attended to
discuss STS (Science, Technology and Society Studies) and biotechnology. I would like to add one
central theme that I experienced to be implicitly present throughout this gathering: reflection on the
role of the future STS scholar.
My own research is about the governance of Genetically Modified Insects (GMIs) . This 16
fitted squarely with one of the cornerstones during the summer school: the governance of the life
sciences in a globalized context. For instance, this issue was addressed in Phil Macnaghten’s
(Unicamp/Durham University) lecture on GM crops and that of Aditya Bharadwaj (The Graduate
Institute, Switzerland) on stem cell research.
One of my study’s findings is that GMIs raise concerns as the biotechnology challenges and
transcends the categorisations and orderings on which the common principles of governance and
public policy are based. Different geopolitical understandings of GMI projects can be observed in
each setting of deployment, resulting in different responses. These differences in understanding can
lead to tensions. Interestingly, the tensions I observed exist between the different approaches used in
the North (Europe) and South (Latin America). It is this tension between different societies using
different public reasoning that sparked my curiosity: could such a division between North and 17
South exist as well within the global STS community? Traveling from the Netherlands to the
summer school in Brazil it was not division that I found, but co-creation.
Rayna Rapp (New York University) stressed during her thought-provoking lecture that the
new generation of (STS) researchers – a profile that fitted the majority of her audience – should ask
themselves where they will stand in the future. How to find ways to be academically, politically,
" The purpose of the Genetically Modified Insect (GMI) biotechnology is to suppress insect populations 16that are agricultural pests or that spread diseases harmful to human beings.
" This is in reference to what Sheila Jasanoff named ‘Civic Epistemologies’ (Jasanoff, 2011).17�30
and socially relevant? As an early career researcher (but a lifelong student) and inspired by her
lecture, I started wondering about the role of the STS scholar. As much as the field of STS is about
co-creation between technoscientific and social aspects, I figured that it is also about the co-creation
between the young STS scholar and the established one; between STS scholars and biotechnical
engineers; between activism and academia; between arts and science; between North and South; or
even between today and tomorrow. I should not, however, formulate this issue in such a
dichotomous form: either continuity or discontinuity would be a better fit.
How I see the future role of the STS scholar comes close to what Wiebe Bijker refers to as
the public intellectual (2003). This new ideal-typical intellectual follows a pragmatic philosophy,
draws on STS, and focuses on concrete problems as a starting point instead of universal values and
differences. This would mean a broadening of the STS agenda to be able to address the wide range
of current societal problems and an increasingly more prominent role for the STS scholar in society.
Having brought together such an international, young, and vibrant group of STS scholars, I
believe that the gathering of the ESPCA summer school also has symbolic value: continuation of
the STS practise and the rise of a young community of public intellectuals.
I am grateful to the organisers, FAPESP, and UCL for their generous funding and support in making
this experience possible.
References:
Bijker, W. E. (2003). The Need for Public Intellectuals: A Space for STS Pre-Presidential Address,
Annual Meeting 2001, Cambridge, MA. Science, Technology & Human Values, 28(4),
443-450.
Jasanoff, S. (2011). Designs on nature: science and democracy in Europe and the United States.
Princeton University Press.
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Connecting the dots: field mapping, network and community building
Gabriela Bortz Institute for Science and Technology Studies
Universidad Nacional de Quilmes (IESCT-UNQ) CONICET, Argentina
A week went by where a set of disconnected –or
mildly connected- particles were being entangled
together by strange energetic bonds, or even chemical
downloads that made some new electric cellular
connections. Going back to an old Science,
Technology and Society debate, one may think of a
network planner, given the particles’ gathering was no
accident indeed, or a self-organized process, where
heterogeneous elements got aligned in heterogeneous ways in a fledgling –but up and coming-
socio-technical network. Considering the empirical base gathered through that one week, one might
say it was probably a little bit of both. And what circulated among this energetic field were humans,
worldwide research institutions, artifacts, knowledge, techniques, biological material, huge science
labs, funding, plane tickets, interactive learning, disciplinary frames, S&T policies, sociotechnical
imaginaries, coffee and caipirinhas.
Would have been our own research subject-objects at the time, we would have seen how the
Sao Paulo School of Advanced Sciences 2014 “Biotechnology, Biosocialities, and the Governance
of the Life Sciences” was a delight in itself for any STS scholar around: the privilege of studying a
truly ‘in the making’ process of network building and the emergence of a worldwide community,
getting more dense after each presentation and coffee break, and that got reinforced as well in a
parallel virtual tier by networking and media covering in an endless flow of #ESPCA2014 tweets.
But, to increase the delight of that inner S&T anthropologist that inhabits within each of us, that
week involved not merely a human / institutional dot connection within over 100 young scholars –
and nearly 20 highly renowned professors- from all around the world, but also the assembling of a
whole set of research topics and material entities that draw together a complex biosocialities map:
reproductive technologies, stem cells, GMOs and pesticides, public health, sanitary interventions,
cancer research and medical care, smoking habits, genetics and the Genome Project, synthetic
biology, art, gender issues, immigration and diasporas, tissue economies, biohacking, clinical trials,
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sociotechnical imaginaries, open science, disabilities, body control technologies and eugenics,
bioethics, regulation and unions, indigenous knowledge and knowledge negotiation, Science and
Technology policies, R&D agendas, persistent inequalities and social activism.
And now what? How to multiply the connections between the dots? And how can we make
these bonds thicker? And what for?
During the ESPCA 2014 what we have attended and discussed is a whole range of pressing
– past, present and near future- problems that need to be addressed: from infectious diseases to
neurologic diseases and cancer; and the need to provide new research and treatment responses, from
land grabbing, concentration and multinational seed companies, to the need to dynamize local safe
food production that can deliver food for all; from new forms of labor and risks and the need to
provide protection for workers; from infertility, to the need to make available reproductive
treatments; from new forms of bio-economic trades and exchanges, and the need to regulate on
emerging legal voids; from neglected diseases and disabilities, and the need for the ‘patients’ to get
‘active’ and empowered, striving for R&D and public health responses in the public sphere; and the
list goes on. And we have also came across a whole range of technological solutions: artifacts,
processes –such as new biotechnological processes and techniques, preservation of indigenous
knowledge, or even new ways of producing knowledge from a grassroots perspective, such as
hacking or open science-, or organizations – such as healthcare systems, regulations-, and that let
us think of new sociotechnical presents and futures.
As Bijker (1995:6) would say: “I have come to believe that an integration of case studies,
theoretical generalizations and political analysis is called for and possible, both to understand the
relations between technology and society and to act on issues of socio-technical change”. This
intense thought provoking and intellectually invigorating summer/winter (there was some
interpretative flexibility on the matter) school has seeded a whole new set of connections and
networks, and a whole –not new- but pressing set of global and local issues, relevant both for North
and South, that need to be addressed. From these plural knowledge framings put in dialog in a
community of practice, the challenge ahead is to find ways to go beyond the academic discussion
towards socially relevant research-action: questioning the directions of technological development,
integrating developing knowledge into social and environmental problems, engaging in further
policy and social movements’ interaction, and embracing its governance towards more egalitarian
sociotechnical futures.
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Whose Dreams Are These? The Importance of Governing Beyond RiskLisa Cockburn
PhD Candidate in Science & Technology Studies York University, Canada
Below I offer a few of the most salient points and lessons I took from the São Paulo School of
Advanced Sciences on Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the Governance of the Life Sciences. A key
thread throughout the week was the need to govern beyond risk. This means asking questions about
the types of research we as a society want to invest our limited resources in. For example, Jane
Calvert stressed the importance of upstream engagement and anticipatory governance that involves
the publics in all stages, not simply outreach to gain acceptance of predetermined paths. Stephen
Hilgartner set the tone well when he asked, how do "unimaginable" technologies become imaginable?
To approach this question he offered a comparison of what he termed “vanguard visions” often
brought forth by elite collectives who have access to money, power, social capital, knowledge, and
what Jasanoff and Kim have described as sociotechnical imaginaries http://sts.hks.harvard.edu/
research/platforms/imaginaries/). Sociotechnical imaginaries are national, durable, and develop over
time, while vanguard visions may be fleeting. As Jane put it, technological visions smuggle in values.
During Susanne Lettow’s thorough overview of bioeconomies, biopolitics and gender, I was
reminded of the value of activating a feminist methodology, even when dealing with topics not
explicitly gender-related. A feminist methodological approach pays attention not only to what people
say but what their practices are, looking for the underlying desires and perceived needs that drive
their actions, and paying attention to the contested nature of needs and desires, power relations, and
individual and contested modes of resistance. Attention to desires and perceived needs can help to
avoid falling into patriarchal modes of judgment of right and wrong, which I think is especially
important when dealing with uncertain futures and speculative visions. While we should not ignore
the risks, we also need to remain open to the futures these technologies seem to be offering, all the
while asking, who benefits from these dreams, and under what conditions? The incorporation of
design questions and creative work is also key in this regard, as exemplified by the remarkable art-
science collaboration in which Jane Calvert was a participant, Synthetic Aesthetics (http://
www.syntheticaesthetics.org).
Although we may aim to govern beyond risks, the risks themselves must also be confronted.
Highlighting the challenges of regulating emerging technologies, Noela Invernizzi of the Latin
American Nanotechnology and Society Network (www.relans.org) provided an illuminating and
thought-provoking take on the interface of nanotechnology, labour unions and workers’ rights. As the
first reports of dangers of working with these particles in an intimate and loosely controlled manner
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emerge, (such as this report of a chemist working with nickel nanoparticles http://
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajim.22344/abstract), risks remain underreported. It seems clear
that specific regulation is needed for nanotech, not just an extension of chemical regulations, as the
surface effects (increased reactivity) that emerge at the nano-scale form the basis for both their
innovative potential and their potential risks. It was disturbing to hear that although Europe and
Australia are deeply involved in regulatory discussion, the USA and Canada have undertaken almost
no regulatory activity; even more so, since the above-mentioned case occurred in Canada. Noela
discussed how the increasing scientification of regulation works to undermine lay knowledge that
workers gain from first hand experience with these new technologies. She highlighted the necessity of
attending to the “undone science” that those with the power to fund research may overlook. The
concept of “undone science” was first articulated by David Hess, and later elaborated as “systematic
nonproduction of knowledge in the institutional matrix of state, industry, and social movements” by
Frickel et al (2010) (http://sth.sagepub.com/content/35/4/444.short). This research on dangers and
long-term effects may not be the most glamorous or lucrative, but it is necessary if we are going to
make informed decisions as a society on how to proceed, not only with nanotechnology, but with
biological engineering, synthetic biology, and other emerging technologies.
The last point I will make moves from theory to academic practice: a reminder of the
incredible value of colleagues. Academic work can be overwhelmingly isolating. The opportunity to
share fragmented and unfinished ideas can be one of the most valuable aspects of both summer
schools and conferences. But at all of these events, it is inevitably during the informal, social times
that the most useful interactions occur. Although this held true, what made this experience exceptional
for me was that some of my most generative thinking about my own work happened while
participating in a small group discussion about other students projects. This summer school was the
most disciplinarily-focused event I have participated in to date. For the first time, rather than feeling
like an outsider among historians or anthropologists or sociologists, I was actually surrounded by
people working in STS, which was heartening. Two afternoons had been set aside for smaller groups
to discuss student work, and our breakout group decided to rebel against the empty oppression of the
air conditioned buildings and move outside. As we sat in the golden glow of late afternoon sun
surrounded by exotically shaped Brazilian seedpods, we chatted with sociologist of science Phil
MacNaghten about GMO regulation, interface-blurring cyborg technologies, and how to formulate
meaningful questions about science and society. Although on the second day we moved back inside
and engaged in a more formal presentation format, I left that first session feeling more invigorated,
inspired, and clear-sighted than I had for quite some time. Sometimes, even academics need to dream
together.
�35
ESPCA: Reflections on Power and PoliticsMelissa Creary
Doctoral Candidate at The Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts Emory University
The Escola São Paulo de Ciência Avançada em Biotecnologia, Biossociabilidade e Governaça em
Ciências da Vida (Sao Paulo School of Advanced Science in Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the
Governance of the Life Sciences) brought scholars from across the globe to discuss technologies of
body and earth, imaginaries, and identities. I explore how the biology, social determinants, and
policy for sickle cell disease are framed in Brazil. Examining various levels, from the individual to
the governmental, I pay particular attention to cultural and historical ideas about race, health, and
identity. The collectivities that I study share a personal investment in their biology. But how does
the concept work when seemingly static notions of biology are situated with a culturally fluid
framework of race? How does the State aid and abet these collectivities in the provision of hope?
How do authenticity, legitimacy, and power work together to the advantage or detriment of my
study population? The reflections below attempt to highlight aspects of the weeklong experience
that helped me frame my work.
The concept of power inherently embeds itself into conversations about identity, legitimacy,
and status. This was a highly acknowledged topic throughout the week. Stephen Hilgartner framed
biosociality as a process enacted through classification, power, discipline, and hierarchy. Theories
of legitimacy of power, as explained by Korostelina (2014), have described legitimacy as
acceptance of the system of power as “right” by both advantaged and disadvantaged groups.
Members of low-status groups are in conflict with the system and must manage their
incompatibility within the system. The social reconfigurations that emerge around sickle cell
disease are an example of biosociality. Biological citizens are thusly produced who share this
diagnosis and make claims to the state. This is a strategy enlisted by those within systems of power
who use their identities (racial, molecular-genetic, national, ancestral, etc.) to gain access to higher
rungs of status. Often because there is so much riding on this ascent for recognition, those who are
most marginalized engage in “political economies of hope,” (Good, 1990). Aditya Bharadwaj
highlighted these concepts in his discussion on the production of biotechnologies and its
implications for society. His reference to nomadic identities and the therapeutic citizens presented
ways of thinking how my narrators may navigate large hegemonic forces. I was inspired to think
�36
about how the notion of “engines of medicalization” as discussed by Kenneth Camargo, plays itself
out in my project. In the case of the creation of sickle cell policies from the Brazilian Ministry of
Health, the engines are vast and include geo-political trends, public health infrastructure,
democratization, and the many actors who may serve more as coal than the engine itself. The
(perceived) quality of this coal has the power to seize the engine in its entirety.
I was also drawn to how these collective identities produce “lives as political acts,” phrased
by Herbert Daniel, an AIDS activist from Brazil, and research participant of speaker, Carlos
Guiherme do Valle. This idea continues to resonate with me and was at the forefront of my mind
when Rayna Rapp closed our weeklong program with her reflections on science, technology, and
social activism. The Brazilian biological citizens, who have sickle cell disease have organized
themselves into biosocial groups, have become important stakeholders who interact on every level
with the development and implementation of policy. Many of them have also transformed their
lives based on a personal diagnosis or that of a family member. I was pushed by Rapp’s
presentation to look for how activism is performed in discursive ways as well. Active and passive
performance will help tell the stories of narrators who form their identities around particular sites of
knowledge and power in my work. The potential novelty of racial consciousness delivered with the
diagnosis of sickle cell disease for some, may affect how the new biological citizen interacts with
new knowledge (of both disease and race) and opposing power.
For both the individual and the collective, the relationship between somatic knowledge and
biocitizenship claims is an evolving and complicated one. The nuanced lectures organized by the
State University of Campinas, UNICAMP, provided a rich platform that emphasized the need for
work that continues to question how biopolitical strategies are utilized in these claim-making
practices.
�37
Socially Engaged STS and the Value of North-South Collaborations
Roberto Toledo INSHEA
Here, in addition to sharing a little more about my research, I would like to reiterate my gratitude to
the organizers and participants at the São Paulo Advanced School on Biotechnologies, Biosocialities
and the Governance of the Life Sciences for the priceless experience. The school was especially
important for my long-term of goal of building relationships with Brazilian researchers addressing
scientific and ethical debates around medicalization and social exclusion.
The year preceding the event, I participated in a trilingual (Portuguese, Spanish, French)
conference in São Paulo on medicalization where researchers insisted on the importance of building
scientific alternatives to standard approaches in public health instead of simply critically ethically
problematic practices and discourse.
At the school, I was very excited to meet Brazilian and Latin American researchers with more
social engagement and greater post-colonial sensibility than is typically reflected in STS departments.
I will never forget the conversation I had at Casa São Jorge with Lea Velho and Renato Dagnino
about leftist STS approaches and Orlando Fals Borda and Paulo Freire as STS researchers avant la
lettre.
In terms of my research on medicalization, my exchanges with Kenneth Camargo and Sandra
Caponi were precious. I was especially honored to accept Ken’s invitation to visit the Instituto de
Medicina Social in Rio following the event. This pluridisciplinary institute, where Michel Foucault
was once an invited speaker, has a long history of critical and creative research on public health. I
was once again confirmed in my informed belief that Brazil is an “obligatory passage point” for my
long-term research projects.
Finally, I greatly enjoyed meeting and discussing with socially engaged non-Brazilian
professors who have been conducting research in Brazil and collaborating with Brazilian researchers,
such as Sahra Gibbon and Phil Macnaghten. I hope that the school will motivate more non-Brazilians
to learn Portuguese and to develop sustained collaborations. To conclude, I would like to share the
poster on my STS research that I put together for 2013 Medicalization conference in São Paulo where
I began developing such collaborations in the specific areas of my research. For those who would like
a description of my research in English, they can also refer to my short piece on the Cultural
Anthropology website: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/347-invisibilities-deviation-visibilizing-
the-invisible-operation-of-racism-in-french-psychosocial-institutions
Até a próxima!
�38
São Paulo Advanced School on Biotechnology, Biosocialities and the Governance of the Life Sciences, August 11th - 15th
Rodrigo Saraiva Cheida Mestre e Doutorando pelo DPCT
Universidade Estadual de Campinas
Resumo do projeto de Doutorado
O objetivo de minha pesquisa é compreender o desenvolvimento histórico, os atores e
iniciativas que contribuem para a organização da produção do conhecimento científico das
neurociências no Brasil. Especificamente, busca-se compreender os arranjos organizacionais e
mecanismos que determinam as principais características e práticas da produção da neurociência
brasileira, quais fatores que levaram determinados paradigmas de pesquisa serem dominantes na
área, como estes paradigmas conectam o conhecimento de diferentes especialistas, suas abordagens
teóricas, disciplinares, linhas de pesquisa e sistemas de conhecimento especializados. Desta forma,
esta pesquisa pretende contribuir na compreensão de como são formadas as comunidades
neurocientíficas brasileiras e sua relação com a formulação de políticas de saúde pública, a
organização de pesquisa e assistência nas Neurociências no Brasil.
A pesquisa em desenvolvimento se inspira no contexto em que as neurociências despontam
como um campo de pesquisa que promete revolucionar a compreensão do funcionamento e as
doenças do cérebro. Principalmente nos Estados Unidos da América e na Europa, pode-se afirmar
que tal campo do conhecimento científico é desenvolvido com estratégias persuasivas que buscam
lhe conferir credibilidade política e moral ao reivindicar o caráter revolucionário das pesquisas na
área. A evolução massiva de investimentos neste campo do conhecimento científico é acompanhada
de um discurso que enfatiza as descobertas dos processos de saúde e doenças do cérebro e suas
implicações na vida social e cultural dos seres humanos. Sendo assim, as neurociências e as
neurotecnologias (fármacos, técnicas de visualização cerebral entre outros dispositivos) ganham
imenso destaque na forma como agenciam a interpretação dos fluxos intraneuronais e nas
estratégias de intervenção sobre o cérebro.
Os temas da Escola São Paulo em Ciência Avançada em Biotecnologia, Biossociabilidade e
Governança em Ciências da Vida, foram fundamentais para pensar tanto formas analíticas e os
métodos que utilizo em minha pesquisa. Destaco as palestras do Dr. Stephen Hilgartner, intitulada
The Human Genome Project, e a da Dra. Rayna Rapp, Science, Technology and Social Activism. �39
A palestra do Dr. Hilgartner foi de extrema importância para minha pesquisa, pois o
palestrante apresentou sua pesquisa etnográfica na qual examinou como um regime de governança
foi criado durante os primeiros anos do Projeto Genoma Humano Norte-Americano. Nessa
pesquisa, Hilgartner conseguiu identificar como foi constituído o que ele denomina de “quadro do
governo”. Ou seja, a perspectiva do governo que orientou a organização de uma série de entidades
envolvidas no Projeto Genoma Humano nos Estados Unidos da América. A organização se deu de
forma implícita (não em um documento “constitucional”) e permitiu promover uma visão oficial da
qual os agentes envolvidos com o projeto foram dotados de direitos, deveres, poderes e
possibilidades. Esse regime de governança constituiu uma nova categoria de ciência, a “Biologia de
Larga Escala”, e o imaginário sóciotecnico para governá-la.
A palestra da Dra. Rayna Rapp foi também muito importante para minha pesquisa, pois
através da perspectiva da Antropologia da Saúde e da Doença, a pesquisadora chamou atenção para
o papel engajado que as etnografias da ciência e tecnologia possuem ao trazer em perspectiva a
construção da experiência da Saúde e da Doença na interação entre médicos e pacientes, em
diferentes contextos. Rapp tem um trabalho sobre a amniocentese, em que investiga como a noção
de risco é construída através dos dispositivos médicos e como as mulheres que enfrentam o teste
passam por decisões críticas sobre sua saúde e o futuro filho. A palestrante citou uma série de
trabalhos etnográficos produzidos sobre o tema em diferentes contextos e conseguiu colocar em
perspectiva como a percepção médica e do paciente varia diante desses casos apresentados.
A palestra de Hilgartner foi importante para refletir sobre o papel das entidades que estão
envolvidas com a produção neurocientífica no Brasil, a forma que se organizam e quais os atores
envolvidos. A pesquisa de Rapp, foi muito importante para pensar o método de minha pesquisa,
pois a etnografia do seu estudo de caso e dos diferentes casos citados que envolvem a perspectiva
antropológica em estudos da Saúde permite analisar as diferentes percepções dos atores envolvidos
com a saúde e a doença.
�40
Governing novelty: where does bureaucracy fit?Rosanna Dent
Doctoral Candidate in History and Sociology of Science University of Pennsylvania
Governance of new technologies for knowing, altering, and creating human bodies and populations
was a central discussion at the Escola São Paulo de Ciência Avançada em Biotecnologia,
Biossociabilidade e Governança em Ciências da Vida (ESPCA). Stephen Hilgartner opened the
course asking how we govern in the face of novelty, and how continuity interacts with efforts for
change within the life sciences. The ensuing lectures offered provocative, productive analysis of
these questions. Some addressed large-scale issues, such as Phil Mcnaughten’s transnational
comparison of GMO acceptance or Noela Invernizzi’s work on occupational health in
nanotechnology. At the other end of the spectrum, Aditya Bharadwaj’s ethnography of auto-
production and stem cell interventions in India together with Susanne Lettow and Rayna Rapp’s
discussions of the “bioeconomy of body bits” brought potent questions of need, desire, and
subjectivity to analyses of biotechnologies.
Despite these enticing discussions of politics and the personal, however, I was repeatedly
drawn to the more mundane question of paper pushing. Where does bureaucracy fit in these forms
of governance? How are existing systems of regulation expanding and mutating to confront
novelty? I was captivated by the speakers’ analyses of future making in emerging practices and
fields of study. But, caving to the historian’s focus on continuities, I am also curious as to the
institutionalization and routinization of these social and ethical practices, something perhaps more
accessible for cases with deeper historical context. The course raised key related questions for my
work: How have new forms of life and the biotechnologies that produce them been incorporated
into pre-existing ethical and moral frameworks? How has governance of the life sciences been
enacted on the practical, daily level of the government employee or the ethics committee member?
And finally, what can the examination of the past’s novelties tell us about the vanguard,
unimaginable, or rogue in the present?
One facet of my current research examines the ethical and regulatory systems that have has
governed the study of indigenous populations in Brazil over the past sixty years. Scholars, artists,
and explorers who traveled to indigenous communities from 1933 onward were expected to engage
with the bureaucracy of the Brazilian state. These researchers and regulators were also negotiating
novelty; whether in the 1950s or the 1980s, field practices, storage possibilities for biological
samples, and forms of political engagement with indigenous “subjects” were never static. Over �41
time, ideas about ethical scientific engagement with humans have evolved. The institutions
responsible for oversight of this research have changed and multiplied. But have the changes in
bureaucracy been motivated by new technologies and practices? Do they effectively respond to
them? In many senses, the investment in governmentality that animates the Brazilian state’s
engagement with research regulation has remained constant: research on indigenous populations
made indigenous communities knowable in important ways.
My work suggests the original regulatory mission – to protect the interests of state
institutions – has mixed with, but has not entirely been replaced by the bioethical mission of
protecting indigenous bodies and communities. As the number of government agencies involved in
regulation has grown, what was rarely an efficient administrative process to begin with has grown
in complexity and required documentation. I understand this resulting regulatory system to be an
example of what Marie-Andrée Jacob and Annalise Riles refer to as a “bureaucracy of
virtue” (2007). With the professionalization of ethics, in a bureaucracy of virtue it becomes
increasingly central to demonstrate the ethical nature of research through documentation. This
emphasis on documentation is part of a routinization of research ethics, and at times takes away
from deeper reflection on the meaning of human interactions of scientific and medical research.
This routinization at the bureaucratic level has been met with vehement debate from both
social and natural scientists in Brazil. Likewise archival evidence shows varied and often nuanced
perspectives of individuals working within government agencies. However, the underlying
structures of regulation seem to privilege the expansion of paper-based ethics. The informed
consent form symbolizes an assurance of good governance. By mandating it, the state claims to
protect its scientific subjects. A historical perspective suggests these changes have not been driven
directly by new research practices or technologies. Rather, they have been more closely tied to
institutional politics than emerging ethical concerns.
For the rich case studies of our week in São Paulo, it seems clear that documentation and
routine in existing bureaucratic regimes will be insufficient to address such issues as transnational
surrogacy, international bioprospecting collaborations, and genome geographies. Bureaucratic
practice evolves gradually in comparison to scientific practice, and not always dialectically. The
lectures of ESPCA brought the implications of this disjuncture into sharp relief.
�42
Free Expression PiecesGenomeLucia Ariza
Visiting Researcher Gino Germani Research Institute
University of Buenos Aires
This piece aims to celebrate the beauty of contemporary representations of (human) genomes, yet at
the same time to query their resonance among, or friendliness towards, non-expert publics. It also
intends to pose a question regarding the portrayal of variability and/or uniqueness in scientific
inscriptions of the genome. The work was inspired by images of genomes available from the web,
as well as by representations of nature at both the supra and subcellular levels.
Mixed media (Indian ink and sequins on paper).
�43
Activism and AcademiaRaquel Velho
Doctoral candidate in Science and Technology Studies University College London
with financial support from the CAPES Foundation, Brazil
Inspired by Rayna Rapp’s final lecture at the Summer School, I was brought to think about how we
deal with the various paradoxes within academia. The one which troubles me most is that of
objectivity vs activism, the former being glorified and the latter feared in many circles. This short
reverie is the result of a free creative writing exercise where I tried to highlight the struggle one
might go through when striving for social change whilst being embedded in the age-old institution
of academia.
–––– –––– –––– –––– –––– –––– –––– –––– –––– –––– ––––
There are spaces in the world where silence reigns. Being invisible is the key to maintaining
stability, ensuring survival. Ripples in the pond might disturb something which slumbers in its
depths, and we cannot be sure what that something might be. So we don’t throw pebbles, and we
watch our step around murky puddles.
Growing up in these spaces makes us burrow within our skins, too shy to ask those around
us what they think about where it’s all going, where we are all going, together, as we try and find
even footing on our way there. Always avoiding the puddles, of course. We cannot reach the top of
the mountain if we have mud weighing us down, spattered on our shoes, or worse, on our tweed
jackets. These items of clothing which had originally started off as combat boots and a parka
morphed somewhere up the hill as we learnt that status quo is something difficult to shift.
The top of the hill. Upon reaching the prized destination, they say there comes a moment of
pride and joy as one admires the shining tower whose heavy doors beg to be thrown open. As it
catches the sunset in the right way, it reflects knowledge onto the world. A beacon to those who
perceive it from the right angle, its imposing nature does nothing to stop the distance from reducing
it to a mere twinkle. We, however, are confronted by its immensity; the blinding nature of its
whiteness, wholeness, an unwavering column looms and thrusts its shadow over us.
The pristine imagery of the ivory tower haunts us as we struggle through swamps of
methodology and deserts where inspiration is scarce. These are messy spaces, yet still we are told
that speaking about our failures will make us weak as we compete for appointments. So we imitate
those before us, as they were successful in this quest, and burrow. We hide our heads within our
books, finding solace in the fact that our colleagues and peers have done the same. In single file,
�44
noses stuck to glue and threaded binding, our academic qualification progresses. Voices mutter that
this is what it is all about; higher education requires dedication and perseverance, and these are
things you find within, not without. It could sound profound, but it reverberates as isolating.
Someone, somewhere in the middle of the line, trips and stumbles. The path is narrow and
most have become clumsy as their limbs acclimatised to repetitive movements. They topple over,
hands reaching for rocks, scattered books, stray roots or even discarded notes, searching for a ledge
to pull themselves back on track. It comes as a surprise that the fall is anything but steep, nor is it
very far to drop. Their boots have been scratched and there’s mud on their button-down shirt, and as
they shake off the dust and panic they realise: here’s another route! There’s a pregnant pause while
they take in the different path, attempting to make out what lies beyond it.
It seems abandoned, derelict, or even untouched. Here and there, however, there are hints of
someone having passed through this area before. Instead of cutting back the tops of trees and
personal narratives, someone has coaxed them out and braided them into guiding rails leading
deeper into a wild forest. They hesitate, but the path seems insistent and the forest’s ferocity
diminishes as they see more and more evidence of previous explorers having crossed it.
Uncharted territory is profoundly terrifying, even more so on one’s own. If at times we take
the path of least resistance, it might not be due to it being the easiest but rather because it appears to
be the only one. Beaming towers are such tempting analogies when one is striving towards
knowledge. Though they may be painted as menacing, their height and seclusion seem to give an
incredible vantage point over the rest of the world, particularly from the top of the hill. The path
there is simple to find, it has been imprinted into the very fabric of the world and all one must do is
avoid the puddles.
Somewhere along the way we might stumble. This can be an eye-opening moment where a
blunder serves as a lesson and weakness might begin to be questioned rather than squashed.
Hesitant voices might be heard over the murmuring of a wild forest where a plurality of others
experience deeply personal stories. The tower on the hill is so very far away from the forest of
others, yet from that distance it speaks of it in singular terms of great authority. Within the forest,
the various others are loud and unruly and combative, a confusing cacophony that deafens us as we
try to decipher it.
The choice between combat boots or tweed jackets. It too is a tempting imagery, and here
too we are blinded by its simplicity. Silence, however, should not reign where voices fight for
legitimacy. By all means, follow the path to the tower or take the route through the forest, but throw
a few pebbles in the pond and ripple the questions that lurk in its depths. �45
Review of ‘The Great Transformation: The political and economic origins of our time’ (1944) by Karl Polanyi - A book
for lesser social scientists?Samantha Vanderslott
Doctoral Candidate in Science and Technology Studies University College London
During the ESPCA Summer School I was inspired by Dr Susanne Lettow (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) who presented on ‘Bioeconomies, biopolitics and gender relations’ drawing upon Karl Polanyi through his concept of fictitious commodities. I have been a long-time fan of Polanyi’s work and decided to write a book review on his magnum opus. In Science and Technology Studies we normally only pay attention to his younger brother Michael Polanyi who wrote about tacit knowledge - I’m happy to see that Polanyi is being revisited and redeployed in new fields.
Abstract: Karl Polanyi’s seminal work The Great Transformation has had a unique reception over the years. This review considers the disciplinary reactions to a book that was published nearly 70 ago but still remains decisive among social scientists. The Great Transformation provides original thought on the relationship between society and the economy, which would seemingly be of interest for both economists and sociologists but this proves not to be the case.
***
What sparked my interest in The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi is the reception it has
received over time. Critically acclaimed when first published, it was forgotten about for a number of
years, before being rediscovered in the late 20th century. In the 1940s the book was a timely account
of the contemporary state of affairs. Polanyi offered an explanation as to why the world seemed to be
falling apart, in the aftermath of two world wars, the upheaval of the industrial revolution and one
‘Great Depression’.
Beginning with the gloomy statement: “Nineteenth Century civilization has collapsed”
Polanyi goes on to root this claim in historical analysis and introduces a number of novel theoretical
concepts along the way. Notably this includes the idea of ‘embeddedness’, describing how the
market is embedded in society. It means that not only is society at times subordinated to the market
but also that attempts to separate the market from society through the self-regulating market is a
utopian ideal and unachievable. The other central concept is ‘fictitious commodities’ where Polanyi
warned of the dangers in commodifying land, labour and capital. These exist naturally and are not
produced exclusively for exchange, so will always present tensions in their treatment as commodities.
While clearly inspired by Marxist thought, ideologically Polanyi holds his own and was able to
provide another alternative to the traditional economic thinking of the day.
�46
His writings later became a perfect fit for opposition to neo-liberal market fundamentalism at
its height in the late 90s to early 2000s, because underlying Polanyi’s assertions about market society
is ammunition for critique of the free market. Today, in the context of economic crisis, The Great
Transformation offers theoretical underpinning to arguments about the destruction of society through
economic forces. However, despite being a rich potential source for thinking about both the economy
and society, it is a divisive book among social scientists. Economists have tended to ignore it, while
sociologists and others have had a keen interest. Why then have some schools of thought taken to
Polanyi while others dismiss him entirely?
An intriguing exchange went on a couple of years ago in the context of a book review, which
goes some way in answering this question. Greg Clark, economics professor at the University of
California, Davis reviewed The Great Transformation . He argued against the enduring allure that: 18
‘markets corrupt societies’ and defended free market capitalism as a “resilient and stable system”. He
criticised Polanyi as an inaccurate historian and poor predictor of future events but criticised the
readers of Polanyi even more, going on to make a full-scale attack on those who put Polanyi on their
curriculums. In return, Fred Block a sociologist at the same institution posted his response . He 19
objected to Clark changing the subject from a book review to a disagreement with free market critics,
his “real targets - those lesser social sciences such as sociology, political science, and anthropology -
that have found Polanyi’s work to be extraordinarily useful.”
Block does points out that there are some economists, such as Nobel-prize winner Joseph
Stiglitz who are pro-Polanyi. Still, Stiglitz does stand somewhat alone. Apart from the handful of
economic historians who have variously drawn on or objected to Polanyi’s historical account, there is
a limited number of economists who have been inspired by him. On the other hand there is an
appropriation of Polanyi by sociologists to provide alternatives to economic thinking about markets,
guiding critiques of neoliberalism. This is where the economists come in: to object to an
encroachment on their territory and over-preoccupation with economics. To some economists,
sociologists are trying and failing to provide valuable contributions to their discipline . 20
Thus, this book has reached an interesting position in intellectual debate. It stands alone to a
degree between disciplines and is part rhetorical device but also contains some enduring concepts.
The Great Transformation has served as more than a book in itself but an embodiment of a
battleground within the social sciences, where the moveable lines between economics and sociology
become contentious in the process.
" http://www.nysun.com/arts/reconsiderations-the-great-transformation-by-karl/79250/18
" http://www.longviewinstitute.org/nosuchthing19
" See: http://economics.mit.edu/files/3076 20�47