Biopolitical experts - CFP for a monographic issue of Quaderni Storici
Call for papers for a monographic issue of «Quaderni storici»
Social
sciences have long focused their attention on the profile and the role
of experts, considering their emergence and the role they acquired into
the decisional processes of national and supranational political
institutions as an occasion to investigate transformations in the
relationship between practices, knowledge and powers.
The expert
is involved in uncertain situations, for the neutrality recognized to
his own capacity to get a deeper level of truth. According to the
research of social sciences, talking about experts is equivalent to
discuss the process of legitimization of knowledge, starting from the
relationship with the concrete experiences and the statutes of truth
that define the knowledge. In these terms, the processes of selection
and identification of experts appear as a complex and full social
process, mobilizing different requests through which criteria and
profiles of belonging and identity are replicated.
Although the
presence of experts is testified in different time periods, literature
has identified the Nineteenth century as a turning point, mainly for the
definition of the forms of government and for the launch of the
professionalization's process. In this period the use of terms as
experts and expertise started to spread significantly, in regard to
technical and scientific competences at the service of public
administration and institutions of modern state.
The main European
dictionaries ascribe to the expert's knowledge a cognitive foundation
linked to a practical experience, repeated over time and derived from a
knowledge which is operative, efficient and able to achieve the result.
This cognitive foundation enables to make the distinction between the
expert and the technician, figures that often have been considered as
synonymous. Although experts have emerged in various fields (art,
medicine, economy), the research has focused mainly on the technological
and scientific knowledge because of its relationship with sharper and
more recognizable statutes of truth. Experts dealing with life and the
living have been investigated mainly into more formalized decisional
processes, as those concerning tribunals and the role of legal medicine.
Following
the gradual crisis of the representative state and the growth of
decisional power of supranational institutions, the recourse to experts
has spread, throughout institutional or para-institutional networks,
considered as the option to resolve doubts and promote decisions based
on assessment considered as impartial and scientifically founded. The
increased social and administrative intervention on life's spaces
favored the recourse to experts coming not only from biomedical
knowledge or health-related knowledge, but also to the creation of
specific knowledge, as in the case of bioethics. These practices are
considered part of the so-called biopolitics, an inspiring theoretical
category, which, however, requires to be tested for the concreteness of
various experiences of intervention on life and on specificity of
different involved actors.
Considering the suggestions and the results of social sciences’ research on experts and expertise, this issue of Quaderni storici
intends to investigate genesis, paths and profiles of the subject
involved in decisional processes through which institutions act on human
bodies and life. Who are the life's experts involved in questions
concerning life, its origin, its end? How those figures are selected?
Which are the priorities guiding the selection of knowledge for the
decision concerning the biological and physiological dimension of human
life? What is the relationship between the nature of political decision
on the issue of life and the contents analysis of the experts?
The
aim of this issue is to contribute to a critical reflection on experts
and their role, capable to get the variety of profiles included in the
term "expert" and, at the same time, able to add elements for a better
understanding of this figure whose profile maintains elusive aspects.
Quaderni storici
asks for the submission of proposals considering different aspects of
this story: characters of legitimization and selection process;
privileged knowledge; disciplinary construction of bioethics and
biomedicine; spaces of action and decisional roles; relationship with
law and religion; relationship with national and supranational
representation. The proposals (around 500 words) accompanied by a brief
CV should be sent by June 25, 2017 to the editor Emmanuel Betta (emmanuel.betta@uniroma1.it). The issue will be published by 2018.
Contact Info:
Emmanuel Betta Dipartimento di Storia culture religioni, Sapienza Università di Roma
Contact Email: