This paper investigates the growing concerns surrounding the utilisation of biometric technology within humanitarian organisations, with a specific focus on the Biometric Information Management System (BIMS) operated by UNHCR. The study is based on a literature review in which themes of concern are first identified in theoretical literature followed by an examination of empirical literature (here termed ‘refugee-including literature’) to see if the concerns are shared. The primary aim is to offer a comprehensive understanding of biometric concerns by amalgamating previous research, while at the same time bringing to light the specific concerns voiced directly by refugees themselves. Using Michel Foucault’s biopolitics and Michael Barnett’s humanitarian governance, the findings reveal two overarching themes shared between the theoretical and refugee-including literature: Concerns of Power (agency, data-access, and the testing of new technologies) and Concerns of Policy (function creep, fraud prevention, and technosolutionism). The study also finds that refugee-including literature presents an additional concern not seen in the theoretical literature: limitations on economic agency, while excluding another: concerns about private company data-access. The refugee-including literature is also found to offer some remarks in support of biometric registration. In conclusion, this study not only sheds light on concerns surrounding humanitarian biometrics, it also highlights the distinctive insights provided by refugees themselves. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations aimed at addressing the identified concerns and promoting responsible and ethical use of biometric technology in humanitarian operations.

No description available.

This thesis examines literary texts that represent encounters with model organisms in ways that enact an interspecies ethics that turns the narrative of bodily relationality embedded within the model organism into a source of care, friendship, respect, and mourning. My project understands model organisms as material beings as well as semiotic and narrative entities; I suggest that the very ‘materiality’ of the model organism’s body is symbolic precisely because it is designed to refer to bodies other than its own. The model organism involves a double relationality between the categories of ‘animal’ and ‘human’ because it serves as a mediator between human nature and nature at large. This is not to say that that human biology is not part of ‘nature’ but rather that anthropocentric and human exceptionalist ideologies pervade discourses of human biology and thus the model organism provides a link to our biological and corporeal ‘selves’ in a way that maintains species divisions. The texts I analyze throughout this dissertation offer alternative ways of thinking about the model organism by exposing the multiple meanings and narratives that coexist within them both as representations and as living sentient beings. This project centers around two questions: How do cultural texts represent and negotiate disconnects between how model organisms signify within scientific discourses and their broader cultural identities? How does literature specifically engage with scientific knowledge in ways that both disrupt and affirm the status of the model organism as a scientific object? / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This dissertation explores how different understandings of power in IR theory lead to different understandings of world order. In particular, I examine how notions of power have informed recent 'debate about empire' and what the term empire might usefully mean in the context of contemporary international relations. I start by investigating how power is understood in relation to the role of shared understandings. Mainstream or "Rationalist" scholars of IR have argued that shared norms and principles are epiphenomenal, existing only to the extent that sovereign states find utility in them. 'Reflectivist' scholars, on the other hand, have suggested that we attribute a much greater degree of autonomy to what they call "constitutive knowledge". That is, the intersubjective and historically contingent truths about world politics that inform the values and norms of state behavior. What is noteworthy about the recent debates about "empire" is that, for better or for worse, Rationalist scholars have tended to explain America's recent unilateralism in terms of a return to the logic of political realism which gives primacy to state power. However, following the Reflectivist argument, I argue that it is a mistake to limit the analytic scope of unilateralism to the egoistic agency of any one state. Instead, it may be more precise to situate American unilateralism in the context of an emerging regime or formation of shared understandings which is more global in scope. To explore this possibility, I turn to Foucault's theory of power which explores how liberal governments both direct their populations and rationalize the use of certain forms of violence. I turn also to Hardt and Negri who, taking their lead from Foucault, offer a novel definition of the term empire as a quality or condition of the practice of global governance particular to late modernity. Hardt and Negri define empire as a new form of global sovereignty that has emerged along with the global market and global circuits of production. My research explores how this definition can be used to refine such key concepts and categories of IR theory research as sovereignty, political economy and security. Through the reinterpretation of these key categories, I show how theories based on constitutive knowledge are capable of recognizing that there is in fact a great deal more going on in contemporary global power relations than American unilateralism. / Ph. D.

This study discusses the developing role of nutrition as a biopolitical object during the First World War. As research into food led to the discovery of vitamins in 1912, the world would shortly  erupt into global warfare thereafter in 1914. Modern, global warfare tested the limits of food production. American and British authorities worked towards new methods for combating malnutrition and ensuring quality food could be allotted to civilians and soldiers alike. Research into vitamins and nutrition in general continued during the war, and this new food model quickly became vital for American and British civilians and soldiers alike- who came to increasingly rely upon vegetables and substitutes for wheat, in the form of alternative grains, and meat in the form of beans. Milk continued to be held in highest regard by doctors and governments -owing to its high nutritional content, including the two vitamins discovered in 1912. At the same time, soldiers had their rations bolstered by fresher produce on the Western Front, while in the Middle East, germinated peas proved to be effective at warding off scurvy and beriberi- even where supply lines were at their longest. These efforts, pushed by doctors and governments working in collaboration, resulted in a profound shift in the way governments treated the realm of food, in all its aspects, but also in matters of the health of their populations. This in turn altered how conscious the average person was of what they ate-owing to the greater understanding of quality food and healthy eating during, and directly after the First World War.

Symbole de modernité pendant la majeure partie du XXe siècle, la cigarette est depuis une trentaine d’années la cible d’interventions croissantes visant à réduire sa consommation. La lutte contre le tabac bénéficie d’un dispositif sans précédent qui fait office de cas d’école en santé publique, par son ampleur et par l’adhésion qu’il suscite. L’intérêt d’étudier cet objet réside ainsi dans la propriété essentielle de la lutte anti-tabac de relier un dispositif institutionnel et des motivations subjectives. Le dispositif anti-tabac (DAT) a en effet vocation à faire converger les prescriptions normatives d’un ensemble d’institutions et les désirs individuels, et y parvient manifestement dans une certaine mesure. Il permet dès lors d’aborder à la fois un travail sur les sociétés et un travail sur soi. Cette thèse entreprend une analyse sociologique du dispositif anti-tabac au Québec et vise à interroger les modalités et les fins de ce contrôle public de la consommation de tabac, en mettant au jour ses dimensions culturelles, symboliques et politiques. La santé publique apparaissant de nos jours comme lieu central de l’espace politique et social dans les sociétés contemporaines (Fassin et Dozon, 2001 :7), l’utopie d’un « monde sans fumée » se révèle selon nous tout à fait typique des enjeux qui caractérisent la modernité avancée ou « société du risque » (Beck, 2001, [1986]). Après avoir présenté le rapport historiquement ambivalent des pays occidentaux au tabac et ses enjeux, puis problématisé la question de la consommation de substances psychotropes dans le cadre d’une production et d’une construction sociale et culturelle (Fassin, 2005a), nous inscrivons le DAT dans le cadre d’une biopolitique de la population (Foucault, 1976; 1997; 2004b). À l’aune des enseignements de Michel Foucault, cette thèse consiste ainsi en l’analyse de discours croisée du dispositif institutionnel anti-tabac et de témoignages d’individus désirant arrêter de fumer, au regard du contexte social et politique de la société moderne avancée. Le DAT illustre les transformations à l’œuvre dans le champ de la santé publique, elles-mêmes caractéristiques d’une reconfiguration des modes de gouvernement des sociétés modernes avancées. La nouvelle biopolitique s’adresse en effet à des sujets libres et entreprend de produire des citoyens responsables de leur devenir biologique, des sujets de l’optimisation de leurs conditions biologiques. Elle s’appuie sur une culpabilité de type « néo-chrétien » (Quéval, 2008) qui caractérise notamment un des leviers fondamentaux du DAT. Ce dernier se caractérise par une lutte contre les fumeurs plus que contre le tabac. Il construit la figure du non-fumeur comme celle d’un individu autonome, proactif et performant et fait simultanément de l’arrêt du tabac une obligation morale. Par ce biais, il engage son public à se subjectiver comme citoyen biologique, entrepreneur de sa santé. L’analyse du DAT au Québec révèle ainsi une (re)moralisation intensive des questions de santé, par le biais d’une biomédicalisation des risques (Clarke et al., 2003; 2010), particulièrement représentative d’un nouveau mode d’exercice de l’autorité et de régulation des conduites dans les sociétés contemporaines, assimilée à une gouvernementalité néolibérale. Enfin, l’analyse de témoignages d’individus engagés dans une démarche d’arrêt du tabac révèle la centralité de la santé dans le processus contemporain d’individuation. La santé publique apparait alors comme une institution socialisatrice produisant un certain « type d’homme » centré sur sa santé et adapté aux exigences de performance et d’autonomie prévalant, ces éléments constituant désormais de manière croissante des clés d’intégration et de reconnaissance sociale. / Symbol of modernity for most of the twentieth century, smoking has been for the last thirty years the target of increasing interventions to reduce its consumption. Tobacco control benefits from an unprecedented device that acts as a case study in public health, by its scope and the awareness it raises. The interest to study this object then lies in the essential property of tobacco control to bind an institutional device with subjective motivations. The anti-smoking apparatus (ASA) was indeed intended to get the prescriptive requirements of a set of institutions to converge with individual desires, and obviously succeeds to some extent. It thus allows us to address both work on societies and work on oneself. This thesis undertakes a sociological analysis of the anti-smoking apparatus in Quebec and aims at questioning the modalities and purposes of tobacco control by uncovering its cultural, symbolic and political dimensions. Public Health appearing today as the central place of the political and social space in contemporary societies (Fassin and Dozon, 2001: 7), the “smoke-free world” utopia proves to be in our opinion quite typical of the stakes which characterize late modernity or “risk society” (Beck, 2001, [1986]). Having presented the historically ambivalent attitude of Western countries toward tobacco and its stakes, and problematized the issue of substance use within the framework of socio-cultural production and construction (Fassin, 2005a), we situate the ASA in the framework of a biopolitics of the population (Foucault, 1976; 1997; 2004b). In the light of the teachings of Michel Foucault, this thesis thereby consists of the crossed analysis of institutional tobacco control discourse and of testimonies of individuals wishing to quit smoking, with regard to the social and political context of late modernity. The ASA shows the changes at work in the field of public health, themselves characteristics of a reconfiguration of the modes of government of societies. The new biopolitics is indeed aimed at free subjects and undertakes to produce citizens responsible of their biological future, subjects of their own biological conditions optimization. It leans on a “neo-Christian” guilt type (Quéval, 2008) which characterizes such a fundamental levers of the ASA. It is characterized by a struggle against smokers more than against tobacco. It builds the figure of the non-smoker as that of an autonomous, proactive and efficient individual and makes simultaneously quitting smoking a moral obligation. Through this, it engages its audience to subjectify as biological citizens, entrepreneurs of their own health. The ASA in Quebec analysis reveals an intensive (re)moralization of health issues through a biomedicalization of risks (Clarke et al., 2003; 2010), particularly representative of a new way of exercising authority and regulate behaviors in contemporary societies, regarded as a neoliberal governmentality. Finally, the analysis of testimonies of individuals engaged in a process of smoking cessation reveals the centrality of health in the contemporary process of individuation. Public health then appears as a socializing institution producing a certain “type of man” centered on his health and adapted to the performance and autonomy requirements prevailing, these elements now increasingly constituting key-elements of integration and social recognition .

Representations of female characters in cinema have the effect of othering the female in front of the viewer’s gaze. Women’s characters are constructed along the lines of their gender and race difference. In this paper I focus entirely on the character of the woman domestic worker in four films: Ilo Ilo, The Second Mother, The Maid, and At Home. The paper aims to provide a different reading of this mostly trivialized character and rethink its otherness by pinpointing it in biopolitical labor and homes of biopower, namely of affect and oppression. I am interested in how labor can reconfigure the domestic space to a heterotopia, or what I call a ‘heterooikos’, which is the space occupied by the other. Finally, I will attempt an analysis that reimagines otherness captured by cinema, by locating, in the film text, techniques of resistance as a countersuggestion to techniques of character identification. My aim is to provide a different way to interact with subaltern subjects in film by recognizing otherness as part of an ethical response.

Esta dissertação pretende compreender a analítica proposta pelo filósofo francês Michel Foucault no curso realizado no Collège de France intitulado Nascimento da Biopolítica (1978-79) a respeito da arte de governar neoliberal. Buscamos apreender a relação entre a análise do neoliberalismo e outros momentos e conceitos da produção bibliográfica foucaultiana, tais como as noções de biopolítica, de governamentalidade e de poder disciplinar. Para tal, realizamos uma incursão em diversas obras do filósofo, como As palavras e as coisas (1966), Vigiar e Punir (1975), História da Sexualidade I A vontade de saber (1976), além dos cursos Em defesa da sociedade (1975-1976) e Segurança, Território, População (1977-78). Por fim, o texto também se propõe a realizar contribuições ao estudo do neoliberalismo como um todo, explicitando as veredas abertas pela teoria de Foucault e apontando para além de um exercício de exegese teórica da experiência filosófica foucaultiana. / This dissertation aims to comprehend the analytics carried out by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France entitled The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79) regarding the neoliberal art of government. We seek to apprehend the relation between the analyses of Neoliberalism and other moments and concepts of the foucauldian bibliographical production, such as the notions of biopolitics, governmentality and disciplinary power. In order to accomplish such task, we approach several works written by Foucault, such as The order of things (1966), Discipline and punish (1975), The History of sexuality volume 1 The will to knowledge (1976), as well as the lectures Society must be defended (1975-76) and Security, Territory, Population (1977-78). To conclude, this text also contributes to the study of Neoliberalism as a whole, emphasizing the paths opened by Foucaults theory and pointing beyond an exercise of theoretical exegesis of the foucauldian philosophical experience.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-13T14:10:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Renata Presa Hermann.pdf: 4050843 bytes, checksum: ae3f4c08f4babb4bdb119c2d4d7270e6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-22 / In the group of interdisciplinary studies that characterize the field of Communication, this research analyzed the enunciation present on the covers of women s magazines CLAUDIA and TPM, starting from the following question: how are the communication and consumption strategies mobilized in the biopolitical calling discourse of the aforementioned magazines? We assume the following premises to develop an observation on the production dynamics of the biopolitical calling discourse and their relations with consumption practices: 1) the devices of control that were, originally, present in State institutions, are in contemporaneity inserted also in media discourses; and 2) the productions of sense created by media discourse of biopolitical calling in the analyzed magazines, reflect discourses of truth that are inserted in a logic proper to a discursive formation with specific conditions for production. The notion of biopolitics permeates our observation, dialoguing with paradigms of communication and consumption to map the biopolitical callings of the corpora, to identify the lifestyle that is promoted in the context of consumption, and to problematize the social production of senses created through the discourses of biopolitical calling in the articulation between communication and consumption. This is a transdisciplinary research that works with theoretical paradigms of communication, consumption, philosophy, discourse analysis and studies of the body. Authors like Prado, Hoff, Sibilia, Bruno and Silverstone serve as grounds for our observation on media callings; Canclini, Douglas&Isherwood and Rocha aid us in notions about consumption; Brandão and Orlandi guide us in the concepts of understanding about discourse in the ADF, from Pêcheux, and theory of discourse, from Foucault; finally, Foucault also serves as base for our research with his studies on production of power and knowledge about the bodies of individuals and populations, applying the concept of biopolitics. With the mapping of verbal and non-verbal texts, the identification of biopolitical callings that are present in the corpora and the categorization of these (imperative of happiness; need for continual improvement; a beautiful and healthy body; questioning of the status quo), we use the following analysis keys to problematize the social production of senses promoted by the analyses magazines: said and unsaid, conditions of production and positivity. We identify that CLAUDIA and TPM mobilize strategies of communication and consumption to produce discourses of biopolitical calling, yet the formats and strategies used are different in each one, as are the contracts of communication and the way of questioning their readers. The callings of CLAUDIA emphasize self-caring on an individual context, the contract of communication paints a woman that requires guidance, and the textual strategies use mainly the conative function of language. In turn, the callings by TPM go beyond selfcaring and question its readers for the management of life on a social context. Both ways of calling, besides their differences, press on the subject responsibility over their body, both in what refers to beauty care as well as health and productivity, which, in the dynamic of contemporary capitalism, is identified as a way, even if controlled, of power of the subject over their own body. / No conjunto dos estudos interdisciplinares que caracterizam o campo da Comunicação, esta pesquisa analisou os enunciados presentes nas capas das revistas femininas CLAUDIA e TPM, a partir da seguinte questão-problema: como são mobilizadas as estratégias de comunicação e consumo nos discursos de convocação biopolítica das revistas mencionadas? Partimos das seguintes premissas para desenvolver uma reflexão sobre as dinâmicas de produção dos discursos de convocação biopolítica e suas relações com as práticas de consumo: 1) os dispositivos de controle que, originalmente, estavam presentes nas instituições de Estado, na contemporaneidade encontram-se inseridos também nos discursos midiáticos; e 2) as produções de sentido geradas pelos discursos midiáticos de convocação biopolítica das revistas estudadas refletem discursos de verdade que se inserem em lógicas próprias de uma formação discursiva com condições de produção específicas. A noção de biopolítica permeará nossa reflexão, dialogando com paradigmas da comunicação e do consumo para mapear as convocações biopolíticas dos corpora, identificar o estilo de vida promovido no âmbito do consumo e problematizar a produção social de sentidos gerada por meio dos discursos de convocação biopolítica na articulação comunicação e consumo. Trata-se de uma pesquisa transdisciplinar, que trabalha com paradigmas teóricos da comunicação, do consumo, da filosofia, da análise do discurso e dos estudos do corpo. Autores como Prado, Hoff, Sibilia, Bruno e Silverstone fundamentam nossa reflexão sobre as convocações midiáticas; Canclini, Douglas & Isherwood e Rocha nos auxiliam nas noções sobre consumo; Brandão e Orlandi nos guiam nos conceitos acerca do entendimento sobre discurso na ADF, de Pêcheux, e teoria do discurso, de Foucault; por fim, Foucault também embasa nossa pesquisa com seus estudos acerca da produção de poder e saber sobre o corpo de indivíduos e populações, a partir do conceito de biopolítica. Com o mapeamento dos textos verbais e não verbais, a identificação das convocações biopolíticas presentes nos corpora e a categorização destas (imperativo da felicidade; necessidade de melhoria contínua; corpo belo e saudável; questionamento do status quo), utilizamos as seguintes chaves de análise para problematizar a produção social de sentidos promovida pelas publicações: dito e não dito, condições de produção e positividade. Identificamos que CLAUDIA e TPM mobilizam estratégias de comunicação e consumo para produzir discursos de convocação biopolítica, porém os formatos e estratégias utilizadas são diferentes em cada publicação, assim como os contratos de comunicação e as formas de interpelar suas leitoras. As convocações da revista CLAUDIA enfatizam o cuidado de si no âmbito individual, o contrato de comunicação concebe uma mulher que precisa ser guiada, e as estratégias textuais utilizam predominantemente a função conativa da linguagem. Por sua vez, as convocações da TPM vão além do cuidado de si e interpelam a leitora para a gestão da vida no âmbito social. Os dois modos de convocação, apesar das diferenças, imputam ao sujeito a responsabilidade sobre seu corpo, tanto no que se refere aos cuidados acerca da beleza quanto da saúde e da produtividade, o que, na dinâmica do capitalismo contemporâneo, identificamos como uma forma, mesmo que controlada, de poder do sujeito sobre o próprio corpo.

Esta dissertação pretende compreender a analítica proposta pelo filósofo francês Michel Foucault no curso realizado no Collège de France intitulado Nascimento da Biopolítica (1978-79) a respeito da arte de governar neoliberal. Buscamos apreender a relação entre a análise do neoliberalismo e outros momentos e conceitos da produção bibliográfica foucaultiana, tais como as noções de biopolítica, de governamentalidade e de poder disciplinar. Para tal, realizamos uma incursão em diversas obras do filósofo, como As palavras e as coisas (1966), Vigiar e Punir (1975), História da Sexualidade I A vontade de saber (1976), além dos cursos Em defesa da sociedade (1975-1976) e Segurança, Território, População (1977-78). Por fim, o texto também se propõe a realizar contribuições ao estudo do neoliberalismo como um todo, explicitando as veredas abertas pela teoria de Foucault e apontando para além de um exercício de exegese teórica da experiência filosófica foucaultiana. / This dissertation aims to comprehend the analytics carried out by the French philosopher Michel Foucault in his lectures at the Collège de France entitled The Birth of Biopolitics (1978-79) regarding the neoliberal art of government. We seek to apprehend the relation between the analyses of Neoliberalism and other moments and concepts of the foucauldian bibliographical production, such as the notions of biopolitics, governmentality and disciplinary power. In order to accomplish such task, we approach several works written by Foucault, such as The order of things (1966), Discipline and punish (1975), The History of sexuality volume 1 The will to knowledge (1976), as well as the lectures Society must be defended (1975-76) and Security, Territory, Population (1977-78). To conclude, this text also contributes to the study of Neoliberalism as a whole, emphasizing the paths opened by Foucaults theory and pointing beyond an exercise of theoretical exegesis of the foucauldian philosophical experience.