Muchas gracias!
Well, I was thinking a little bit more in pieces of research similar to Foucault's "Society Must Be Defended", Jacques Donzelot "The invention of the social" or Nikolas Rose's "Inventing Our Selves"... I mean studies which trace a genealogy of social / health protection systems (and its degree of institutionalisation) in relation to scientific notions (and the power of the professional bodies which defend them) of "society", "human nature", "citizenship" and so on, in a Latin American (and specifically Brazilian) context.
For instance, I believe that Spain's social protection systems have been conceived very similarly to French institutions, but long before the return of the democracy in 1975 public policies regarding social protection were not based on "ideas" defended by practitioners of the liberal professions (physicians -and in a much more restricted sense nurses- were probably the only ones, but strongly tied to religious organizations of care). In the 80s there was a great growth of psychologists, social workers and other professionals implied in these settings. This provoked a massive production "welfare state"-like legal measures (which were developed on top of the dictatorship’s institutions) in the domains of public education, health, social services and so forth. In that sense, the “invention of the social” in Spain has been a hybrid endeavour of both religious (heavily enhanced during Franco’s dictatorship) and liberal (in the late 19th century up until 1936 and then in more recent times) care workers and institutions. So “professional power” in Spanish social care has been weak and is now progressively rising. It has not been up until recently that we could have started witnessing something similar to what Donzelot, Foucaut or Rose have spoken about France and the UK.
The thing is I don’t know much about post-colonial administration in Latin America, but I have heard many Latin American colleagues complaining of the scarce utility most of the writings by Foucault, Donzelot or Rose have in order to take into account their very realities. Not because they are not interesting, but because the political structure is different, democracies “are young”, there is not a strong middle-class, and so on and so forth. But I would really like to know if there are some studies inspired by the writings of these authors that address those very problems.
Thanks again
All the best
Tomás
El 01/11/2008, a las 16:50, Ana Valdés escribió:
Well, I was thinking a little bit more in pieces of research similar to Foucault's "Society Must Be Defended", Jacques Donzelot "The invention of the social" or Nikolas Rose's "Inventing Our Selves"... I mean studies which trace a genealogy of social / health protection systems (and its degree of institutionalisation) in relation to scientific notions (and the power of the professional bodies which defend them) of "society", "human nature", "citizenship" and so on, in a Latin American (and specifically Brazilian) context.
For instance, I believe that Spain's social protection systems have been conceived very similarly to French institutions, but long before the return of the democracy in 1975 public policies regarding social protection were not based on "ideas" defended by practitioners of the liberal professions (physicians -and in a much more restricted sense nurses- were probably the only ones, but strongly tied to religious organizations of care). In the 80s there was a great growth of psychologists, social workers and other professionals implied in these settings. This provoked a massive production "welfare state"-like legal measures (which were developed on top of the dictatorship’s institutions) in the domains of public education, health, social services and so forth. In that sense, the “invention of the social” in Spain has been a hybrid endeavour of both religious (heavily enhanced during Franco’s dictatorship) and liberal (in the late 19th century up until 1936 and then in more recent times) care workers and institutions. So “professional power” in Spanish social care has been weak and is now progressively rising. It has not been up until recently that we could have started witnessing something similar to what Donzelot, Foucaut or Rose have spoken about France and the UK.
The thing is I don’t know much about post-colonial administration in Latin America, but I have heard many Latin American colleagues complaining of the scarce utility most of the writings by Foucault, Donzelot or Rose have in order to take into account their very realities. Not because they are not interesting, but because the political structure is different, democracies “are young”, there is not a strong middle-class, and so on and so forth. But I would really like to know if there are some studies inspired by the writings of these authors that address those very problems.
Thanks again
All the best
Tomás
El 01/11/2008, a las 16:50, Ana Valdés escribió:
You should read Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe for a more post- marxistic
approach, Eduardo Colombo and Cristian Ferrer for a more libertary or
anarchist view and definitely Emilio Mignone. I assume you are familiar with
Luis Abelardo Ramos and Tulio Halperin Donghi, two of Argentina's best
historical writers.
Buena suerte!
Ana
On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Tomás Sánchez-Criado <tomas.criado@xxxxxx >wrote:
Hi there!
My name's Tomás and I'm a Spanish PhD student in Social Psychology
working on the mixture of foucauldian-inspired ideas (anatomo- and bio-
politics, governmentality and techniques of the self) and STS (Science-
Technology and Society). I'm currently working on an ethnographical
research project concerning telecare for the elders, but at this very
moment I'm about to ask for funding for a small project with some
colleagues in Brasil and Spain on the development on "social sciences'
genealogy, governmentality and citizen-making in Europe and Latin
America"
I've read Nikolas Rose, Robert Castel, Jacques Donzelot, Roberto
Esposito, Giorgio Agamben, and some studies concerning contemporary
Spain, but I'm not very familiar with literature on "governmentality"
and "biopolitics" in Latin America. I have the intuition that they
might highlight the colonial past, a meagre substratum of "welfare
state" institutions and the contemporary neoliberal approaches to
social protection, but that is not very specific genealogically
speaking…
That's why I would like to ask you if you would be so kind of
recommending me some interesting literature on biopolitics in Latin
American countries (plus Spain and Portugal), which could set me on
track
Thanks indeed in advance and keep the discussions alive! I certainly
enjoy all of them
Best,
Tomás Sánchez-Criado
PhD Student
Facultad de Psicología
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
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