Michalis Kontopodis

Editorial: Time. Matter. Multiplicity

Although the study of memory would signifi cantly benefi t from the study of time and materiality and vice versa, there is currently very little scholarship that examines how memory, time and materiality interrelate. This special issue of Memory Studies aims at recovering this connection. From the very beginnings of modernity until the present the relation of time, matter or materiality, and memory has remained unsettled. While the mainstream memory studies (e.g. Gazzaniga, 2004) continue to build upon a muchcriticized spatial understanding of time (Middleton and Brown, 2005), constructivist, narrative and postmodern approaches to time and memory (Brockmeier, 1999, 2000, 2003; Gergen, 1993, 1999; Hasenfratz, 2003) disregard materiality, materialization and embodied aspects of temporal and memory-related phenomena (Haraway, 1991; Haraway, 1997; Latour, 1993). The above quotation from the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) can be taken as a summary of a very complex dialectic of invention and remembrance that transcends the limitations of both natural-scientifi c and postmodern approaches to time and memory while pointing towards a study of the interrelation of time, memory and mattering. Mandelstam, much infl uenced by the First Russian Revolution and later – at the cost of his own life – strongly critical of Stalinism, radically redefi nes the relation between the past, present and future claiming that ‘yesterday has not yet been born’. This dialectic of invention and remembrance shapes Mandelstam’s work in accordance with his vision of history (Cavanagh, 1995). The past is not something that exists on an ideal level, it is not a ‘foreign country’ (Ingold, 1996: 200–48) ‘out-there’ (Law, 2004), neither is it an assemblage of experiences or qualities that are preserved, recombined and just carried further into the present (Stephenson and Papadopoulos, 2006); the past will be born, i.e. organized (Law, 1994), fabricated (Latour, 2005b), objectifi ed (Latour, 1994; Middleton et al., 2001), materialized (Haraway, 1997) and stabilized (Law, 1992; Middleton and Brown, 2005) in the future. Mandelstam’s vision belongs to the broader philosophic and aesthetic discourses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that questioned the defi nition of history and tradition to theorize the essence of time and memory in radically new ways. Implicitly or

Investigating Emerging Biomedical Practices: Zones of Awkward Engagement on Different Scales

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values critically explores a new stage in which the life sciences and biomedical practices have entered. This new stage is marked by postgenomic developments and an increased interest of life sciences in the everyday lives of people outside laboratories and clinical settings. Furthermore, particular attention is given to many chronic and degenerative disorders such as cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or developmental disorders. These developments coincide—or have become entangled—with a new set of interests that an anthropologically inclined science and technology studies (STS) is bringing to the analyses of biomedical practices. An increased interest is observed in the anthropologically inclined STS in studying phenomena on different scales and in exploring fields that are not readily dominated by technoscientific rationality in practice. The introduction to the special issue examines briefly these developments and situates them in a broader genealogy of different movements that have taken place in the anthropologically inclined subfield of STS since the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Cardiovascular Disease and Obesity Prevention in Germany: An Investigation into a Heterogeneous Engineering Project

Cardiovascular diseases present the leading cause of death worldwide. Over the last decade, their preventio has become not only a central medical and public health issue but also a matter of political concern as well as a major market for pharma, nutrition, and exercise. A preventive assemblage has formed that integrates diverse kinds of knowledges, technologies, and actors, from molecular biology to social work, to foster a specific healthy lifestyle. In this article, the authors analyze this preventive assemblage as a heterogeneous engineer, that is, as an attempt to order complex everyday life into an architecture of modernism. This article draws on research conducted as part of the interdisciplinary research cluster ‘‘preventive self’’ (2006-2009) bringing together analyses from social anthropology, history, linguistics, sociology of knowledge, and medicine. The authors report here primarily from ethnographic investigations into biomedical research, primary care, and educational practices in kindergartens. The authors conclude that the preventive assemblage largely fails to install any kind of singular order. Instead, it is translated into existing orderings producing heterogeneity of a different nuance.

Introduction: Children, Development and Education – A Dialogue Between Cultural Psychology and Historical Anthropology

In the following introduction to the edited volume Children, Development and Education the reader is introduced to two schools of thought: historical anthropology – a revision of the German philosophical anthropology under the influences of the French historical school of Annales and the Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology – and cultural-historical psychology – a school of thought which emerged in the context of the Soviet revolution and deeply affected the discipline of psychology in the twentieth century. Four significant and interrelated motions of thought, common in both of these schools, are briefly described under the labels: (a) subjectivity, (b) performativity, (c) infans absconditus, and (d) historicity. The introduction emphasizes the primacy of language and signs for the constitution of human subjectivity and the dramatic aspects of child development and examines the symbolic and performative aspects of ritual practices which play a central role in child-rearing, education, and the socialization of children. The impossibility of representation of children and childhood is also discussed and the epistemological position of double culturality and historicity, which enables cultural-historical scholars to reflect on the cultural-historical specificity of their own discourses and methodologies, is briefly outlined. Furthermore, the introduction emphasizes the importance of historical analysis in the context of a broader understanding of history as an ongoing open-ended process and of human development as a process of purposeful collaborative transformation (Stetsenko, 2008). The introduction concludes with a brief presentation of the two main parts of the edited book – which is expected to contribute significantly to what can be called “cultural-historical science.”

Biomedicine, psychology and the kindergarten: children at risk and emerging knowledge practices

This study moves in the space between two fields: science and technology studies (STS) and childhood studies; it thus belongs to the broader STS literature that investigates everyday practices outside the laboratory. The interpretation of ethnographic and bibliographic data on contemporary cardiovascular and obesity prevention in German kindergartens makes evident that when knowledge travels from biomedical laboratories to the preschool, then psychology comes into play! Bodies of knowledge such as behavioural or cognitive theories shape prevention and intervention practices, which could be seen as originally resulting from biomedical findings and trends. Accompanying this development is a change in the primary sciences that deal with childhood: these are no longer pedagogy or developmental and educational psychology (at least in their traditional forms), but ‘developmental science’. All this shapes contemporary childhood in quite normative ways. It thus remains an open question what non- or less normative institutional practices and bodies of knowledge could look like.

How should an ideal innovation process take place

Several international studies (Lasky 2005; Miedema/Stam 2008; Kontopodis 2012) show that school organization and innovation processes are complex for various reasons. According to Fullan (2001), a well-known author on educational reform and innovation in the United States, change during an educational reform is both a personal and a collective experience and cannot be separated from the social context as it occurs in practice. Fullan states that the heart of change is that individuals develop new meanings in relation to innovative ideas in the context of “a gigantic, loosely organized, complex, messy social system that contains myriad different subjective worlds” (Fullan 2001, p. 92).

Eating in the Nursery School: Pedagogy, Performativity & Biopolitics

Abstract The study presented here explores eating as a pedagogical practice. It pays attention to arrangements of things such as Christmas cookies, whole-wheat and white bread, frozen chicken, plates, chairs, tables, and freezers. Entering in dialogue with performativity theory and post-structuralist approaches, a series of ethnographic analyses from German and Brazilian nursery schools reveal how eating can be enacted as a sensual pleasure, a health risk, an ethnic custom, or a civil right within a variety of local pedagogical contexts. Through specific arrangements of foods and other things, young children are educated to eat with moderation, to change their ethnic dietary habits, or to become modern citizens. Pedagogy can thus entail doing public health, doing ethnic identity, or doing citizenship while eating is an important way of doing these in early childhood education and care settings. Keywords: Early Childhood Education & Care; Ethnicity; Obesity Prevention, Performance. Comendo na escola infantil: Pedagogia, Performatividade & Biopolitica Resumo O estudo apresentado aqui explora o ato de comer como uma pratica pedagogica. Tem-se como proposta prestar atencao aos arranjos de comidas como biscoitos de Natal, pao de trigo integral e pao branco, frango congelado, pratos, cadeiras, mesas e congeladores. Atraves do dialogo com a teoria da performatividade e abordagens pos-estruturalistas, uma serie de analises etnograficas de escolas de educacao infantil alemas e brasileiras revelam como comer no jardim de infância pode ser um prazer sensual, um risco para a saude, um costume etnico, ou um direito civil dentro de diferentes historias locais e constelacoes de poder. Atraves da combinacao de alimentos especificos e outras coisas, as criancas sao educadas para comer com moderacao, para mudar seus habitos alimentares etnicos, ou para serem cidadaos modernos. A pedagogia pode, portanto, consistir em fazer valer a saude publica, fazer valer a identidade etnica, ou fazer valer a cidadania e comer e uma forma importante de fazer isso em configuracoes de educacao e nos cuidados na primeira infância. Palavras-chave: Educacao da primeira infância e Cuidado; Etnicidade; Prevencao de obesidade; Performance.

Kardiovaskuläre Prävention als Technik zur Bildung von Leben selbst

»[W]enn die Biologie [im 18. Jahrhundert] unbekannt war, gab es dafür einen einfachen Grund: das Leben selbst existierte nicht.« (Foucault 1974: 168) Leben selbst entsteht laut Michel Foucault mit der Entwicklung eines epistemischen Systems, das die grundsätzliche Vernetztheit aller lebenden Dinge postuliert. Diese Vernetztheit wiederum produziert die Bedingungen, die die Entstehung des Konzepts von Leben selbst befördern (Franklin 2000: 193). Leben selbst bezeichnet also die Gesamtheit der lebendigen Qualitäten und Kapazitäten. Zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts diagnostiziert Sarah Franklin in ihrer Analyse der Entwicklungen der neuen Genetik die signifikante Technologisierung und Kapitalisierung dieses Lebens selbst. Die Lebenswissenschaften zielten in der Logik und Praxis ihrer Interventionen nicht mehr nur noch auf Gesundheit, Tot und Krankheit sondern eben auf Leben selbst. Nikolas Rose führt diese Analyse fort und markiert in seiner Kartographie der Gegenwart fünf charakteristische »Mutationen« oder Dimensionen einer Politik des Lebens selbst: Molekularisierung, Optimierung, Subjektivierung, somatische Erfahrung und economies of vitality (vgl. Rose 2007: 4ff.).

Enacting Human Developments: From Representation to Virtuality

The chapter presented here criticizes the mainstream developmental approaches in psychology and proposes a relational understanding of human development. It brings together materials from two different research projects: ethnographic research that took place at an experimental vocational school in Germany from 2004 till 2005 and a posteriori analysis of an analogue school project that took place in Wilson School in Long Beach California, USA from 1994 till 1998. The analysis of the presented material demonstrates that “development” is not something happening “out-there,” in the school or in everyday life; neither is it just a discursive category specialists use “in-here” to describe what is happening “out-there.” Development is exactly the product or the enactment or the relation between the “in-here” and the “out-there.” This relation is mediated through documents, diaries, photos, CVs, and other tools. All these mediating tools fabricate linear time and development, as we know them in western modernity. Revealing the mediations necessary to fabricate development could lead to imagining radically new individual, collective, and societal developments – an endeavor which proves important especially with regard to gender sensitive education as well as to the education of class and ethnic minorities.