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Lehrende: Dr. Angela Oels
Veranstaltungsart:
Seminar
Anzeige im Stundenplan:
IR: Konflikte lösen
Semesterwochenstunden:
2
Credits:
6,0
Unterrichtssprache:
Englisch
Min. | Max. Teilnehmerzahl:
10 | 24
Weitere Informationen:
Verwendbar in folgenden Studiengängen bzw. Modulen:
- M.A. Politikwissenschaft (FSB ab WiSe 2014/15): Modul Internationales Regieren (IR)
- Masterstudiengänge der Fakultät WiSo: Wahlbereich
Kommentare/ Inhalte:
In this course, we study how global pandemics like HIV/ AIDS and Covid-19 are being governed. However, we do so from a poststructuralist perspective. One of the founding assumptions of poststructuralism is that power and knowledge are closely linked: discourses of knowledge imply power relations and vice versa. The struggle for power must be reconceptualised as a struggle for the attribution of meaning. This course offers an introduction to Michel Foucault's concept of governmentality. With this concept, Foucault signals that the act of governing is by no means limited to the institution of government. Instead, discourse plays an important role in the process of governing. Those who govern draw on certain forms of knowledge/discourse in order to create certain visibilities, to legitimize certain practices and to incite particular subjectivities. This enables them to "govern at a distance". These attempts to govern are not always successful, they also provoke resistance.
For the field of public health, Michel Foucault has distinguished between three modes of governing epidemics: lock-out (leprosy), lock-in/quarantine (plague) and managing (at) risk groups (small pox). To prevent the spread of leprosy, those infected were placed outside the gates of the city and quarantined there, often left to die in the absence of proper care. Foucault speaks of sovereign power that decides over life and death exercised over the infected in the era of leprosy. When fighting the plague, those infected were told to quarantine themselves in their homes, subject to inspection by the state, enforced by high fines. Foucault characterizes the government of the plague as disciplinary power over bodies. Finally, the government of small pox was a lot more liberal. The goal was to enable the masses to keep circulating while those infected or those at high risk of infection were isolated or vaccinated. The aim was no longer to keep the infection rate near zero but to identify an acceptable rate of infections and an acceptable rate of mortality. For this, detailed risk management was employed, including the calculation of mortality rates for different subgroups of the population. The circulation of the masses was sustained while those infected were identified through testing and then placed in quarantine. In the era of small pox, a vaccine was available. The vaccine was allocated first to (at) risk groups in order to have the best impact and save most lives. Foucault called this form of risk management of the population biopower.
In this course, we apply Foucault's concept of governmentality to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and to Covid-19. We classify various measures according to Foucault’s concepts of sovereign power, discipline and biopower and discuss, the relationship between security and liberty for each instance of governing. The second half of the course covers the government of Covid-19 in Germany, Sweden, the level of the European Union, the United States, China and some more countries. We investigate the role of science and discourses of knowledge and ask to what extent these explain differences between the governmentality of Covid-19 in different countries. We also engage with normative ideas of justice and the distribution of vaccine, both nationally and globally. We try to explore which modes of governing the Covid-19 pandemic have been most successful and why.
Lernziel:
- Basic understanding of poststructuralism, especially power/knowledge
- Advanced understanding of Foucault’s concept of governmentality
- Advanced understanding of how pandemics have been governed in the past and in the present, ability to classify measures drawing on the concept of governmentality
- Ability to distinguish commonalities and differences between the governance/governmentality of HIV/AIDS and Covid-19
- Advanced understanding of the role of science in governing pandemics
- Ability to compare the governance of Covid-19 in different countries, using the concept of governmentality
- Ability to identify elements of successful governance of pandemics
Vorgehen:
This course is taught online in weekly Zoom-sessions on Thursdays from 12:15-13:45. We will begin each session with a short presentation on the week's topic, prepared by students. The main part of the session will be dedicated to a guided discussion in small groups (break-out rooms) and in the large group, making sure all important aspects of the week’s topic are covered. We will also use small simulations or ad-hoc role games where suitable. There is a selection of mandatory readings that all students need to prepare for each session. All course materials will be uploaded on OPENOLAT (mandatory reading, presentation slides, instructions for exam papers).
Literatur:
- Dean, Mitchell M. (2010) Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. Second Edition. Los Angeles, London: SAGE.
- Elbe, Stefan (2009) Virus Alert: Security, Governmentality and the AIDS Pandemic. Columbia University Press: New York.
- Hannah, Matthew G.; Hutta, Jan Simon and Schemann, Christoph (05.05.2020) Thinking Through Covid-19 Responses With Foucault - An Initial Overview, Antipose online, https://antipode-online.org/2020/05/05/thinking-through-covid-19-responses-with-foucault/
- Sotiris, Panagiotis (2020 ) Thinking Beyond the Lockdown: On the Possibility of a Democratic Biopolitics, Historical Materialism, 28:3, 3-38, published online. doi:10.1163/1569206X-12342803
- Sjölander-Lindqvist, Annelie; Larsson, Simon; Fava, Nadia; Gillberg, Nanna; Marcianò, Claudio and Cinque, Serena (2020) Communicating About COVID-19 in Four European Countries: Similarities and Differences in National Discourses in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden. Front. Commun. 5:593325. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2020.593325
- Schmidt, Vivien A. (2020) Theorizing Institutional Change and Governance in European Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic, Journal of European Integration, 42:8, 1177-1193, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2020.1853121
- Wolff, Sarah and Ladi, Stella (2020) European Union Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic: Adaptability in Times of Permanent Emergency, Journal of European Integration, 42:8,1025-1040, DOI: 10.1080/07036337.2020.1853120
- Abbas, Muhammad Zaheer 2020: Practical Implications of 'Vaccine Nationalism': A Short-Sighted and Risky Approach in Response to COVID-19. South Centre, Research Paper No. 124, Geneva.
- Emanuel, Ezekiel J.; Persad, Govind; Kem, Adam et al. 2020: An ethical framework for global vaccine allocation, Science, 369:6509, 1309-1312. DOI: 10.1126/science.abe2803
Zusätzliche Hinweise zu Prüfungen:
Leistungsanforderungen:
- FSB WiSe 14/15 (Masterzulassung ab 2014), Modul Internationales Regieren (IR): Studienleistungen (siehe A) und ggf. Hausarbeit (siehe B)
- Wahlbereich: Studienleistungen (siehe A)
A) Studienleistungen (unbenotet):
Mandatory course tasks (required to pass): All students need to study the mandatory reading in advance of each weekly session and be able to summarise the main insights upon request. All students need to pick a date for a mandatory presentation. For these selected dates, students are expected to prepare a 15-minute-presentation on the topic chosen drawing on a presentation software like Powerpoint. The presentation should be presented 'live' in the Zoom session. Moreover, students are asked to develop a task for small-group work in break-out rooms (to last 15-25 minutes). This could be a role game, a case study to discuss based on a suitable newspaper article, that will deepen the understanding of the issue under discussion. Students who are presenting have to send a draft of the presentation slides and the preliminary ideas for discussion by Tuesday 9:00 am before the presentation date. The course teacher will assist the presenting students by giving feedback in advance of the session. Ideally, there will be an online meeting with the presenting students two days before your session to discuss the draft. You are required to attend at least 11 of the 14 Zoom sessions. If you miss more sessions (even if for health reasons), you need to undertake additional tasks in order to pass the course.
B) Modulprüfung FSB WiSe 14/15:
Prüfungsart: (mode of examination): essay
Bewertungsschema: benotet (RPO) (marked)
Umfang: min.3500-max.4000 Words (reference list is excluded from word count)
Abgabetermin: (due date) 01.09.2021 (1 September 2021)
Abgabeort: to be submitted on OPENOLAT
The research question of the exam paper needs to be approved by the course teacher before you start to write the paper. Please send a 1-page exposé with your topic, research question, theory, method and outline to angela.oels-1[at]uni-hamburg.de. You are encouraged to submit essays in teams of two, but this is not mandatory. For teams of two, the word count is not doubled, but reduced to 5000 words (without counting references).
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