Prenatal Genetic Testing: A Technology of Normalization Prenatal genetic testing is a technology made available to more accurately determine whether or not a child could have a birth ‘defect’. The most common birth defects tested for are Down syndrome, Trisomy 18, or an open neural tube defect (Government of Canada, 2013). This paper asserts first that prenatal genetic testing is a technology of normalization, which labels disability as abnormal and a feared outcome, and second that normalization creates unwarranted notions of human identity and happiness. To do this, I begin by providing background information on the work by Michel Foucault on biopower, disciplinary power, and normalization. The purpose of this section is to show first that these…
The study of the influence of society in individual’s health is not recent. To demonstrate the sociology utility, Durkheim (1897) examined the suicide rates in population and suggested that the strong social control among Catholics resulted in low rates of suicide. Nowadays, the data collected by Durkheim will not reflect the same reality. However, the mental health is likely to be related not only to genetics factor, but also to the social reality that the individual is inserted. The…
Foucault claims that the state is at the centre of modern racism, believing other conceptions of racism are more suited to earlier eras. According to Foucault, modern states exercise their power by administrating life; in contrast to previous centuries, these states are preoccupied with life itself, rather than death. In Society Must Be Defended, Foucault attributes the term ‘biopower’ to this idea, meaning states now have the “the right to ‘make’ live and to ‘let’ die.” It is in opposition…
Agamben 's theory, it is a person whom one could kill with impunity (without consequences) (Agamben, 8). He compares this person to the living dead because although they are physically alive, they could be killed at anytime (theoretically) as they have been regulated by sovereign power to be outside the law (Agamben, 8). These individuals, although they can be killed because they are not a citizen, cannot be sacrifices in religious ceremonies because they are not seen as socially and politically…
Make live and let die from man as body to man as species: the birth of biopower and others. Foucault wants to change some things to his yearly long conclusions on the subject of race and its factors contributing to race being socially constructed and not biological. We forward to what he calls State racism and the new factors emerging in either the second half of the eighteenth century and the 19th century. Foucault articulates that one of the basic phenomena of the nineteenth century was what…
For without a doubt, health care inequality is evident in the United States (US). In this particular instance, it is Latino Immigrants who receive insubstantial health care access. For example, immigrant women of Mexican birth “are at increased risk for developing many preventable health conditions due in part to limited access to healthcare and benefits” (Castaneda, et al. 2014). The issue is the US healthcare system is unequitable when it comes to immigrant status. I will examine if Latino…
and subsequent colonization, is pioneering. (Huggan and Tiffin: 18) Second, the term "biocolonialism" is used by a variety of environmental and bioscientific scholars to cover "the broadly biopolitical implications of current Western technological experiments and trends" (Kimball 1996; Shiva 1997 in Huggan and Tiffin: 4). Examples here vary from biopiracy – e.g. the corporate raiding of indigenous natural-cultural property and embodied knowledge – to Western patented genetic modification (the…
There are many examples as to why humans feed off the the idea of biopower, but they each deal with their own unique perspectives and understandings of rationalizing fear. Humans enjoy feeling as though they belong to something importantly unique even though we may just be speks in this enormous universe. For me, every time I fear the future and think of ways to try to manipulate and control my surroundings, I always remember one of my favorite quotes by Neil Degrasse Tyson, “I look up at the…
accused of financially and psychologically exploiting consumers. Thus, the question of how Apple sets a price on its intellectual property is asked: how does one accurately dictate the worth of a creative work that satisfies users and refrains from making Apple appear as a large, greedy corporation? Additionally, how can one consistently innovate to uphold market share and profit goals? To this day, Apple struggles. Described as a “hegemonic operation”, the brand emblematizes capitalism and the…
and also enforces the idea if something is different than our culture then it is wrong and unethical. For example, During WWII Nazi Germany believed there was a perfect race and under the rule of one man armies murdered the individuals that didn’t match their perfect race stereotype. My interpretation of Mbembe’s writing is that she brings the facts to the table and lets her readers interpret the information in whatever way they choose. I gathered that Necropolitics is a socially instructed…