Lec 3 sept24 discip-control
The New York Times
September 21, 2013
Silencing Scientists
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Over the last few years, the government of Canada — led by Stephen Harper — has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists.
It began badly enough in 2008 when scientists working for Environment Canada, the federal agency, were told to refer all queries to departmental communications officers. Now the government is doing all it can to monitor and restrict the flow of scientific information, especially concerning research into climate change, fisheries and anything to do with the Alberta tar sands — source of the diluted bitumen that would flow through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Journalists find themselves unable to reach government scientists; the scientists themselves have organized public protests.
There was trouble of this kind here in the George W. Bush years, when scientists were asked to toe the party line on climate policy and endangered species. But nothing came close to what is being done in Canada.
Science is the gathering of hypotheses and the endless testing of them. It involves checking and double-checking, self-criticism and a willingness to overturn even fundamental assumptions if they prove to be wrong. But none of this can happen without open communication among scientists. This is more than an attack on academic freedom. It is an attempt to guarantee public ignorance.
It is also designed to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the northern resource rush — the feverish effort to mine the earth and the ocean with little regard for environmental consequences. The Harper policy seems designed to make sure that the tar sands project proceeds quietly, with no surprises, no bad news, no alarms from government scientists. To all the other kinds of pollution the tar sands will yield, we must now add another: the degradation of vital streams of research and information.
Power is invisible and continuous in its control over the self
Norm is placed by power in a binary system as normal/abnormal: (Bell curve)
Maintained by:
• Hierarchical surveillance e.g.: normal/abnormal in race or ethnicity
• Normative judgment e.g., IQ tests as Intelligence indicators
The genealogy of power/ knowledge reveals the way the body is regulated through power that explicitly disciplines bodies
• Governmentality
• Biopower
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“The genealogy of knowledge consists of two separate bodies of knowledge:
1.
The dissenting opinions and theories that did not become the established and widely recognized
2.
The local beliefs and understandings (think of what nurses know about medicine that does not achieve power and general recognition).
The genealogy is concerned with bringing these two knowledges, and their struggles to pass themselves on to others, out into the light of the day (Shawver, Lois (2006)
Source: http://www.degenevieve.com/files/Dictionary-Michel%20Foucault.pdf
Foucault dictionary”.
F’s Governmentality :
• The way governments produce the citizen who must obey/follow governments' policies
• The organized practices (mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects are governed
• The techniques and strategies of regulation the society behave and act to make it governable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW3yyTCfm6Q
US - Occupy student debt 2011 (6 min) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyOvenCbr8c 5 min 2012 upload governmentality of control over media
Theories on ‘power’:
• Economic power (Karl Marx & Marxist)
Corporate monopoly
Media conglomerates
Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)
Normalizing social behaviour by monitoring and regulating it.
Certainty of control
Society unconsciously and unquestioningly accepts the capillaries of power and its disciplinary control
Applying Foucault’s concepts to the article by Winter (2002), Media Monopoly
1.
State power vs. Corporate concentration of power
2.
State vs. corporate Surveillance and reinforcement of obedience
3.
State vs. Corporate Punishment (of firing from jobs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2trT8t2-Hl8 Canada’s media monopoly 10min
-2010
Theories on ‘power’:
• Economic power
Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)
Normalizing social behaviour by monitoring and regulating it.
Certainty of control
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Society unconsciously and unquestioningly accepts the capillaries of power and its disciplinary control
Disciplined bodies, e.g., in prisons, the military, the corporate world and in schools.
Modern Times (Chaplin US 1936), …Gattaca (Niccol US 1997),
• Spatial division of individuals
• Control of their activities,
• Organization of individuals into groups
• Coordination of these different groups
• Seattle schools punishment 1.5 min
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjjzpsVjo94
• Race and punishment
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjjzpsVjo94 (8min)
• Philippine univ -Shaming 30 sec http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1uf5T2QAYI
Disciplinary power
• Cultural values determine how society exercises control over its people.
• Who defines what is ‘normal’?
• What impact does ‘non-normal’ label have on those who are so designated?
• Who are those who get to control the ‘non-normal’ people?
• Why and how the designators control the designated?
Disciplinary power (cont’d)
The answers to these questions change over time as power arrangements in society shift. e.g:
Historical periods in ‘knowledge’ construction and dissemination:
1.
Priests controlled knowledge & dissemination
2.
State and private Endowments set up universities & curricula.
3.
Professionals as experts accredit & regulate ‘what’ is knowledge
4.
Information technologies create and disseminate so called ‘knowledge’
5.
Corporate funding impacts, regulates and interferes with the autonomy of the university (a repository of knowledge).
Experts & Expertise:
Tsoukas: (apply Foucault’s Power/Knowledge)
(THE TYRANNY OF LIGHT, The temptations and the paradoxes of the information society Haridimos Tsoukas(1997) Futures, Vol. 29, No. 9, pp. X27-843, 1997)
• ‘Know How’ of those participating in the events reported, is transformed into the ‘Know That’
• Information reductionism
• Knowledge is viewed as a manual
• Information is defined by the chosen representations – they exist independently of human agents
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• “A world that is seen as consisting of sums of information, makes social engineering a very tempting way of thinking and acting”.
• Foucault dubbed the kind of action associated with social engineering
‘governmentaIity’ ”
Tsoukas:
• Popular public assumption is: “if those in charge ‘know’ what is going on, they can manage a social system better. ‘To know’ in this context means having information on the variation of certain indicators that are thought to capture the essence of the phenomenon at hand”.
• Giddens’ ‘expert systems’ - the significant growth of specialized, codified, abstract knowledge.
• Social engineering presupposes that a real phenomenon can be reduced
(Reductionism) to be measurable, standardizable and auditable
Dr. Nancy Oliviery Case:
Issues: 1. Ethics; 2. Academic Freedom
2010 study finds that clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to report a positive outcome
2000-2006: 63% were funded by industry, 14% by government sources, and 23% by non-profits
Industry-funded trials reported positive outcomes in 85.4 % of publications, compared with 50 % for government-funded trials & 71.9% by non-profits’ funded
• University of Toronto clinician, Dr. Nancy Olivieri’s research at the Hospital for Sick Children
• She believed that a new drug treatment posed dangers to some patients.
• The hospital and the university failed to support her against Apotex, cosponsor of the research
• Apotex objected to her publishing her findings
• It was found that the hospital and university officials and representatives of
Apotex subjected her to workplace and other harassment
Nancy Oliviery’s attempts to fight back unethical corp power:
Care of the self: The name of the ethical principle
That leads people to cultivate themselves, that is to work to improve themselves… learning to shape one’s own inner character (Foucault, Care of the Self, p.67)
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