Sakari Tamminen

We have never been only human: Foucault and Latour on the question of the anthropos:

Today, the impact of the work of both Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour is increasingly evident in anthropology, most notably in the subfields of medical anthropology and the anthropology of science and technology. However, so far the oeuvres of these two thinkers have not been compared in a systematic fashion in the secondary literature. The present consideration intends a sustained comparison of their work to the end of problematizing the notion of the human or the anthropos. We suggest that both Foucault and Latour provide us with vital means to question human exceptionalism. Instead of calling upon the essence of human subjectivity by drawing on the notion of intentionality, for instance, they break open the interiority and autonomous hidden essence of the human. While Foucault does this mainly with his notion of the death of Man, Latour’s work calls human essence into question by asserting the respective birth of non-humanity. We argue that it is especially the two thinkers’ mutual concern with relationality that makes their work central to recent discussions of ‘posthumanism’ by proposing a form of ‘ahumanism’. However, at the same time Foucault and Latour tend to neglect the ‘outside’ of relations, although both see it as providing the resources for every assemblage.

Bio-objects and generative relations.

Working Group 3 of the COST Action IS1001 examines bio-objects and their generative relations. This group and its work seek to transcend disciplinary boundaries in humanities, social sciences, and life science and mingle with policy research as well. It also aims to envelop and synthesize various strands of research by taking life science and its relations as subject matter while crossing borders between research settings. One of the key reasons for this networked collaborative approach of Working Group 3 is the scale and nature of previous efforts investigating the development of the life sciences. Researchers in humanities and social sciences, regardless of their collaboration networks, are still far from large scale collaboration when imagining the future of our collective life alongside living objects produced in the technoscientific processes of today. And while there are highly interesting current approaches to studying transformations in understandings of life, they are found among disciplines within human and social sciences that do not interact sufficiently with each other. Philosophy (of biology and bio-ethics), anthropology (of science and medical communities), sociology (of science), political science (of institutional sense-making and deliberation), and legal studies (of jurisdictions), to name but a few, have their own lives in specific epistemic communities of practice. What we do know already is that when we want to think about life – as a vitalist notion, as a biochemical process, as a mechanistic system, or as the force underlying a social system and its politics – we immediately step into a field of competing discourses, framing “life” as an object of representation, intervention, and manipulation in a myriad of ways. In parallel with these academic debates, recent advances in the biological sciences, including new medical technologies, have, however, also led to the analysis of various transformations in the process and understanding of life. These are already articulated with/in diverse bodies – corpora from the literature; organic matter and its networks of circulation; and more “stable” institutions of economic, legal, or political import – with different effects. It appears that bio-objects (1) are rich in potential to destabilize old relations and fertile enough to create new connections that cross the boundaries of academic disciplines and between social institutions. The Working Group 3 has a unique opportunity to address the challenges outlined above and has a two-part main objective: 1) tracking new experimental relations that bio-objects bring about by 2) weaving relations among scholars otherwise unconnected to each other. Accordingly, the group not only investigates the relations that new objects of living and life are capable of generating but also attempts, with a more reflexive attitude, to become more experimental in its ways of working to address the challenges posed by bio-objects (Box 1). Box 1 Our work is characterized by three dimensions in the forming of new relations in the study of bio-objects 1. Global networks: The group attempts to go beyond single case studies in specific national contexts, by developing coherent international comparative frameworks built around the concept of the bio-object. We specifically aim to ground our international comparative framework in detailed local empirical work in which matters of life and living together play an important role. Consider this a call for collaborative research. 2. Common ground: By using the concept of bio-objects as a call for collaboration and, thereby, as a network-generating device, in our studies we explicitly focus on a wide range of experimental relations that are empirically traceable in different contexts. These include material, scientific, social, cultural, economic, and political relations embedded in processes by which bio-objects are becoming a central part of the relations that go into the everyday politics of living together in the 21st century. 3. Informative function: In line with the two dimensions outlined above, we also deliberately aim to cross the borders of the academic community, making our bio-object work relevant for policymaking. This may not always occur through normative modes of operation, but the group shall explore questions of policy in a more neutral, explorative tone. This comes about through provision of EU-wide coverage of bio-objects and their central role as a generative force behind much of today’s vital politics.

Bio-objectifying European bodies: standardisation of biobanks in the Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure

The article traces the genealogy of the Minimum Information About Biobank Data Sharing model, created in the European Biobanking and Biomolecular Resources Research Infrastructure to facilitate collaboration among biobanks and to foster the exchange of biological samples and data. This information model is aimed at the identification of biobanks; unification of databases; and objectification of the information, samples, and related studies – to create a completely new ‘bio-object infrastructure’ within the EU. The paper discusses key challenges in creating a ‘universal’ information model of such a kind, the most important technical translations of European research policy needed for a standardised model for biobank information, and how this model creates new bio-objects. The author claims that this amounts to redefinition of biobanks and technical governance over virtually bio-objectified European populations. It is argued here that old governance models based on the nation-state need radical reconsideration so that we are prepared for a new and changing situation wherein bodies of information that lack organs flow from one database to another with a click of a mouse.

Nativitas: capitalizing genetic nationhood

This paper explores the way in which national sovereignty is defined and constituted through the production of indigenous genetic resources and biovalue. Our central argument is that the commodification of vital matter is mediated through what we call processes of “nativitization.” Nativitization occurs at the intersections of nationhood and nature, particularly through national endeavors to define native biowealth, a process which is constitutionally sanctioned through various global agreements, most notably the Convention on Biological Diversity. Our analysis here explores the politics of nativitas played out within a particular national context, that of Finland and its recent attempts to define and lay claim to its nonhuman genetic resources.

Changing values of farm animal genomic resources. from historical breeds to the Nagoya Protocol

The paper reviews the history of Animal genetic resources (AnGRs) and claims that over the course of history they have been conceptually transformed from economic, ecologic and scientific life forms into political objects, reflecting in the way in which any valuation of AnGRs is today inherently imbued with national politics and its values enacted by legally binding global conventions. Historically, the first calls to conservation were based on the economic, ecological and scientific values of the AnGR. While the historical arguments are valid and still commonly proposed values for conservation, the AnGR have become highly politicized since the adoption of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the subsequent Interlaken Declaration, the Global Plan for Action (GPA) and the Nagoya Protocol. The scientific and political definitions of the AnGRs were creatively reshuffled within these documents and the key criteria by which they are now identified and valued today were essentially redefined. The criteria of “in situ condition” has become the necessary starting point for all valuation efforts of AnGRs, effectively transforming their previous nature as natural property and global genetic commons into objects of national concern pertaining to territorially discrete national genetic landscapes, regulated by the sovereign powers of the parties to the global conventions.