New forms to inhabit the city: towards a biowatcher citizenship

Authors

  • Enrique Baleriola Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
  • Francisco Tirado Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
  • Marco Maureira Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
  • Pedro Torrejón Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona

Keywords:

city, biosurveillance, equipment, preparedness, scenario

Abstract

The citizenship concept is probably, one of the most studied along the History from a social perspective: from Aristoteles and the Greek polis until the liberal city of the 20th Century. In this sense, it has been recently emerged several studies such as the Nikolas Rose or Kezia Barker works highlighting key role of bioscience and biotechnology in order to understand the citizen without pointing out the link with a concrete territory. In this paper, we will be linked with this line and we will present the biowatcher concept in order to frame many politics, actions and events around the contemporary city in a field where the social studies has not arrive deeply: biosurveillance and biosecurity practices in our daily life. Through a study case with documentary material about biosurveillance, we will present the difference in our work with the other mentioned proposals using the paraskeue (equipment) concept given by Michel Foucault. Finally, we will discuss about the biopolitics consequences within this new kind of citizenship and we will put forward the value of the scenario concept in the biosurveillance politics.

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Author Biographies

  • Enrique Baleriola, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
    Machine-Man. Being constantly (re)constructed. Marathon and Triathlon. Short-film & photography passionate.

    Current social issues, Actor-Network Theory, Biopolitics, Biosecurity and Biosurveillance.
    Supervisors: Francisco Tirado and Baltasar Fernández Ramírez
  • Francisco Tirado, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
    I am a senior lecturer in Social Psychology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Throughout my academic career I have been working on topics such as: cyborgs, new ways to rethink social order, actor-network theory, biopolitics, sociotechnical relations, the relation between the idea of event and objects and so on. In my work I am especially happy with: a) The remake of Serres notion “extitution” that I made in my Ph.D. thesis. I found this word in his book Atlas. It appeared in a sentence describing our near future, but without content or definition (Serres way of writing), and when I read it, I thought: “with suitable watering, this concept will grow strong and in all directions”; b) The notion of cinepolitics (kinepolitics) that I have used in several papers to describe a new governmentality practice focussed on the control and administration of our daily movement. I have put forward that cinepolitics is an interesting tool to expand the limits of biopolitics. Speaking in Deleuze jargon, I have to confess that my intercessors (those authors helping you to think) are people like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Michel Serres or Giorgio Agamben. But I like so much classical social and philosophical writers such as Gabriel Tarde, A.N.Whitehead, G.H.Mead, F. Nietzsche or H. Bergson. Currently I am working on topics related with medicine. I am analysing epidemics as a sociotechnical object, I am conceptualizing cancer with concepts from Whitehead’s thought, specifically using the notions of prehension and potencial object, and I am describing the materiality of hope in a cancer patients association.
  • Marco Maureira, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona
    Marco Maureira is psychologist, master in psychosocial investigation and master in comparative literature. He is currently following the Phd program “Person and Society in the Contemporary World” in the Autonomous University of Barcelona. His main research interests are: a) reconceptualization of life in the social sciences and philosophy; b) posthumanism and new materialism and; c) visual research methods.

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Published

2016-11-06

Issue

Vol. 28 No. 2 (2016)

Section

Dossiê Territórios e Paisagens de subjetivação

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To the extent possible under the law, Fractal: Journal of Psychology has waived all copyright and related rights to the Reference Lists in research articles. This work is published in: Brazil.

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How to Cite

New forms to inhabit the city: towards a biowatcher citizenship. Fractal: Journal of Psychology, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, v. 28, n. 2, p. 172–180, 2016. Disponível em: https://periodicos.uff.br/fractal/article/view/5123. Acesso em: 7 dec. 2025.