Constructing/Contesting Mobilizations: Biopolitics, Activism and Identity
Event: WorkshopDate: 27 Jun 2008 00:00
Speaker(s): Sharon Batt (Dalhousie University, Canada); Steven Epstein (University of California at San Diego); Sahra Gibbon (University College London); Vololona Rabeharisoa (Ecole des Mines, France ). Discussants: Alex Plows (Cesagen, Cardiff University) and Celia Roberts (Sociology, Lancaster University)
Organised by: Richard Tutton (Cesagen Lancaster), Alex Plows and Flo Ticehurst (both Cesagen Cardiff)
Venue: Meeting Rooms 2 & 3, Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University
This is the second in the series of five workshops in the ESRC Genomics Network Genomics and Identity Politics Workshop Series 2008-2009.
The aim of the workshop is to examine two interrelated questions: how should we conceptualise forms of patient and public activism associated with health, medicine and science? Do these forms of activism entail the substantiation of new collective forms of identity and what challenges do these pose for thinking about politics and identity more broadly? Accounts of contemporary biopolitics describe a significant historical shift away from the state as the guarantor of health to the emergence of multiple actors mobilising around health, medicine and the promises of science. How we understand these actors as constituting particular forms of collective social action is highly contested.
One perspective has tended to highlight questions about how actors mobilise, create and draw on resources, establish organisational structures, and seek to influence the political and scientific agenda. Another perspective prefers to highlight the way these actors represent new forms of sociality and are creating new forms of collective identity. This workshop will examine these two perspectives.
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