Deadline : December 15, 2011

Title of the session: The transformation of lives: Making up people through biotechnologies
 
Format of the session: Regular session – five 20 minute presentations

Language: English and French

Description of the session :

This session aims to explore the role biotechnologies (stem cells, smart drugs, life-style drugs, etc.) play in the transformation of bodies and the creation of what Clark et al. (2010) have called 'technoscientific identities'. In fact, concepts such as biosociality (Rabinow, 1996), biological citizenship (Petryna, 2002) and neurochemical citizenship (Rose, 2007) capture a reshaping of collective and individual identities through somatic and physical attributes individuals share and around which they get mobilized, and in which technoscientific interventions increasingly play a central role.
Biotechnologies entail the possibility of redefining and extending human limits; they are thus involved in the reconfiguration of the borders between health and illness and between nature and culture (for instance through 'cosmetic neurology' [Cakic, 2009]). And while a number of social scientists have written about new forms of sociality, few studies look in detail at the role biotechnologies play in 'making up people' or biosocialization. The interplay of highly specialized knowledge, its translation into health-related practices - including hype, hope and uncertainty - the effect these practices have on people's notion of self and other, and how people in turn influence issues regarding the standardization and classification of biological facts - are only some of the elements that play a role in technoscientific identities.
For this session, papers based on theoretically informed empirical studies on this subject matter are welcome.

Nous avons le plaisir de vous informer de la publication du livre suivant: 

Of Bodies and symptoms. Anthropological perspectives on their social and medical treatment,
Sylvie Fainzang & Claudie Haxaire eds., Tarragona: URV Publicacions, 2011.

Cet ouvrage contient la contribution de deux membres du MÉOS, soit celle de Baptiste Moutaud et Pierre-Marie David.

Pierre-Marie David, Asymptomatic cholesterol, “wonderdrugs“ and western forms of pharmaceutical inclusion, p. 205.

Asymptomatic cholesterol, “wonderdrugs” and Western forms of pharmaceutical inclusion The use of statins is discussed in the context of asymptomatic cholesterol bodies. Access to statins as cholesterol-lowering drugs is examined as a biopolitical issue from a science studies’ perspective. From the invention of cholesterol to the medications used in treating it, we try to trace and document the process linking science, pharmaceuticals and politics. We describe Western forms of pharmaceutical inclusion comparing the use of global “wonderdrugs” in the US, the UK and France.

Baptiste Moutaud,  From the experimental body to the experimental patient. Medical experimentation in neuroscience, p. 239.
From the experimental body to the experimental patient. Medical experimentation in neuroscience This chapter sets out to explore the forms of medical practice that arise from the application of therapeutic biotechnologies. The purpose is to describe how the use of a neurosurgical technology, Deep Brain Stimulation, for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders in a French hospital creates new configurations of collective practices, by (re)aligning the objectives and practices of a variety of actors, and by developing new entities in the course of its experimental development.