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Recently, epidemics have become an important concern in social sciences. They currently have two important ways of conceptualizing epidemics: a) as a panic object; or b) as a bio-political situation. Nevertheless, these two perspectives disregard that epidemics basically are a way of transforming our daily life. In order to grasp this impact we put forward to conceptualize epidemics as a socio-technical object. Our paper will show this perspective. Analyzing mass media, information from academic journals, such as Science, or from Health Institutions we will explain how epidemics change the main borders of our everyday life. That is, the tension between animal-human, local-global, politics-nature and healthy-pathological. We will argue that after the aforementioned rupture appears a new redefinition of said limits with the following elements: a) medicine appears as the most relevant dimension in that redefinition; b) it is defined a kind of "biological emergency" as the way to understand the aforementioned process of redefinition; and c) a specific body regime is updated. ; Peer reviewed

'Der Beitrag skizziert die Theorie der Positionierung als eine - vor allem auf Konflikte fokussierende - Diskursanalyse von Interaktionen. Darüber hinaus wird dieser Ansatz für die Erforschung virtueller Umgebungen als einem neuen Anwendungsbereich bzw. Forschungsfeld für die Sozialwissenschaften fruchtbar gemacht. Der Beitrag geht dabei in folgenden Schritten vor: Zuerst werden aus sozialpsychologischer Sicht die wichtigen Aspekte von Konflikten thematisiert. Daraufhin folgt eine Darstellung virtueller Umgebungen als sozialwissenschaftliche Analysefelder. Als Drittes wird die Verbindung der Theorie der Positionierung und ihrer Foucaultschen Fundamente und Bezüge entfaltet, um deren Angemessenheit und Verwendbarkeit für die Analyse konflikthafter Interaktionssituationen zu beurteilen. Als empirisches Anwendungsbeispiel hierfür dient die Analyse von Interaktionssequenzen in einer spezifischen virtuellen Umgebung, dem Studierendenforum Humanitats i Filologia Catalana an der Universität Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Mithilfe der Theorie der Positionierung können die Effekte, die konflikthafte Interaktionssequenzen auf die Konstitution der Gemeinschaft haben, in der sie auftreten, verstanden und erklärt werden.' (Autorenreferat)

Der Beitrag skizziert die Theorie der Positionierung als eine – vor allem auf Konflikte fokussierende – Diskursanalyse von Interaktionen. Darüber hinaus wird dieser Ansatz für die Erforschung virtueller Umgebungen als einem neuen Anwendungsbereich bzw. Forschungsfeld für die Sozialwissenschaften fruchtbar gemacht. Der Beitrag geht dabei in folgenden Schritten vor: Zuerst werden aus sozialpsychologischer Sicht die wichtigen Aspekte von Konflikten thematisiert. Daraufhin folgt eine Darstellung virtueller Umgebungen als sozialwissenschaftliche Analysefelder. Als Drittes wird die Verbindung der Theorie der Positionierung und ihrer FOUCAULTschen Fundamente und Bezüge entfaltet, um deren Angemessenheit und Verwendbarkeit für die Analyse konflikthafter Interaktionssituationen zu beurteilen. Als empirisches Anwendungsbeispiel hierfür dient die Analyse von Interaktionssequenzen in einer spezifischen virtuellen Umgebung, dem Studierendenforum Humanitats i Filologia Catalana an der Universität Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). Mithilfe der Theorie der Positionierung können die Effekte, die konflikthafte Interaktionssequenzen auf die Konstitution der Gemeinschaft haben, in der sie auftreten, verstanden und erklärt werden.

We are currently witnessing the rise of a platform capitalism that bases a significant part of its economy on producing behavioral profiles to direct users' actions towards private ends. By associating radical behaviorism techniques with algorithmic data processing technologies, a force that Bernard Stiegler has identified as "psychopower" has intensified and consolidated. This article aims to demonstrate how this is achieved by deploying two control technologies in the architecture of digital platforms: Affective Computing and the Hook Model. Through an ethnographic study on the BeReal social network, we show how these two technologies first capture users' attention and create usage habits and second, promote the circulation of emotions so that these can be linked to specific contexts and datafied to develop behavioral profiles. Finally, we conduct a theoretical exercise to argue that both control technologies are key elements of a new power dispositif that we call "pulsional," which triggers an action in individuals that bypasses their conscious reflection, leading to detrimental consequences for the exercise of their freedom.

The deinstitutionalization of society is in part associated with the growing implementation of new information and communication technologies. These new technologies bring about new collective formations. If the social sciences are succesfully to understand the impact of these technologies, we will need new ways of thinking about institutions and power. We shall take the case of telephone helplines as a test-bed for Foucault's proposals for understanding institutions' operation of power. Specifically, we use the Foucaultian notion that space, body and norms are constitutive elements of the corporeality of institutions. We report how this applies to the case of telephone helplines, and we claim that Foucault's concepts do not go far enough. Instead, we propose the new concept of 'extitution'. Extuition helps understand new anatomies of power anatomy and new kinds of social practices.

Resumen: El artículo analiza cómo la aparición del ejercicio de scenario-planning y su generalización en el mundo de la salud transforma los espacios biomédicos. En ese cambio aparecen nuevos actores, otras maneras de producir conocimiento y una definición de "lo vivo" centrada en el futuro y en una escala global. Partiendo de un bagaje centrado en los estudios de ciencia y tecnología (STS), y más concretamente en la teoría del actor-red, se presenta un análisis de caso que estudia la transformación de los modelos de salud pública (y sus respectivas escalas a nivel global) después del periodo post-"pandémico" de 2009 de gripe porcina. Examinando los múltiples escenarios que se crearon en ese momento, se analiza el despliegue de múltiples sistemas de vigilancia, que forzaron movimientos para la articulación de nuevos actores; la conformación de posibles futuros, el establecimiento de escalas globales y, en última instancia, una nueva conceptualización de lo vivo como valor para asegurar y proteger.

Palabras clave: Scenario-planning, biopolítica, actores, salud global, STS


Abstract: The article analyzes how the emergence of scenario-planning and its generalization in the health management area, transforms the biomedical arena. In this shift are performing new actors, the knowledge is produced by other means and appears a definition of "life" focused on the future and on a global scale. Seen from Science and Technology Studies (STS) perspective, and more concretely on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), we presented a case study that examines the transformation of public health models (and their respective scales at the global level) after the 2009 post-"pandemic" period of swine flu. Examining the multiple scenarios that were created at that time, we analyze the deployment of multiple surveillance systems, which provoked movements towards the articulation of new actors; the conformation of possible futures, the establishment of global scales and, ultimately, a new conceptualization of "life" as a value to be ensured and protected.

Keywords: Scenario-planning, biopolitics, actors, global health, STS

This paper puts forward that the massive use of protocols in biomedicine has created a new kind of materiality for pathology. This is very well depicted by the notion of 'potential object' coined by A.N.Whitehead. Potential objects are a complete and heterogeneous ordering of life. We will call to these orderings, resulting from the shaping of such potential objects, regimes of vitality. They establish different scales of life, actors and the relation between them in biomedical activity. Moreover, they define the temporality in the medical processes, the correct articulation between normality and abnormality and, finally, they produce a set of motility conditions for individuals. Based on a research about protocols on cancer, telecare and epidemics we will pose that movement is inseparable from the "truth" that always appears in the regimes of vitality. In this sense, we will also pose that biomedicine has remove our concern about movement from the political and individual sphere and has put it in the sphere of health and normativity of science. In a nutshell, biomedicine has transformed mobility into correct-and-healthy-movement. ; El texto plantea que la masiva protocolarización de la biomedicina ha creado una nueva materialidad para la patología. Ésta es caracterizada a partir de la noción de "objeto potencial" que acuñó A.N.Whitehead. Los objetos potenciales constituyen una completa y heterogénea ordenación de la vida. A tales órdenes resultantes de la aparición de un objeto potencial se les denomina "regímenes de vitalidad". Éstos se caracterizan por establecer las diferentes escalas de la vida en la actividad médica, la temporalidad de los procesos médicos, por establecer el tipo de relación entre normalidad y anormalidad y, finalmente, por generar un conjunto de condiciones de motilidad para los individuos. A partir de una serie de investigaciones sobre los protocolos médicos del cáncer de mama, los que rigen emergencias sanitarias como las epidemias o implementan la teleasistencia sostendremos que el movimiento es indisociable del juego de verdad que ofrecen los regímenes de vitalidad. También argüiremos que la biomedicina, al hacer lo anterior, ha sustraído la preocupación por el movimiento del plano individual e incluso político y lo ha vinculado con el de la salud, lo científicamente prescriptible y normativo. En suma, ha transformado la movilidad en buen-y-sano-movimiento.

The authors explore transformations in the surveillance and discipline framework proposed by Foucault (technologies that "allow to see," the panoptic as a completely closed space) by analyzing new Global Positioning System (GPS) care technologies. The authors contrast the antinomadic characteristics of traditional care practices for people with dementia with the new "in-movement" GPS care devices. They outline three main displacements: the definition of a new space that erases the distance between separated social and sanitary spaces; the lifting of the boundary between the home and the neighborhood; and finally, we point out the importance of movement in this process. These devices show the emergency of new micropractices of power and control: a new anatomy of surveillance. Grounded on movement, they transform physical barriers into risk alarms that do not block users' way; instead, they generate information that mobilizes others. The authors refer to the notion of kinevalue to explain how these devices turn living organisms' motility properties into a value that can be managed, as well as the central feature around which new exercises of patients' security and caregiving may be deployed. Through the analysis of a pilot project on GPS telecare devices carried out by the Spanish Red Cross, the authors suggest a new diagram of the control and management of subjects based on their movement, called "kinepolitics."