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Theme 7: Towards life politics

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health care aiming to bio-politics. Biographical methods -09 Theme 7 P. Ahponen. 4. Modelling life ... ambivalent relativism in ethical issues (procedural ethics ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Theme 7: Towards life politics


1
Theme 7 Towards life politics
  • Reflexive modernisation as the context of
    (auto)-biographical studies

2
Changing relationship between the individual and
the society
  • From communities to societies (Gemeinschaft
    Gesellschaft)
  • From the traditional society to the modern and
    post-modern society
  • From the traditional (ontological) security to
    the risk/trust society (Giddens)
  • From objectively based life-conditions to
    subjective consciousness
  • From the world of lay people the society of
    expertise
  • Demands for personalisation, self-identity,
    consciousness
  • Demands for new social commitments and abstract
    control systems
  • Governance, governmentality, self-governance of
    enabled individuals (Foucault)
  • Enlarged sphere of publicity, confusion of the
    private and public life-spheres

3
A socialised individual in the reflexive
modernisation
  • the individual him- or herself becomes a
    reproduction unit for the social in the
    life-world (Beck)
  • Individual situations become institutionally
    dependent life-situations because the liberated
    individuals become dependent on
  • continually changing labour markets
  • formalising educational system
  • increasing consumption patterns
  • welfare regulations
  • therapeutic family consultation
  • psychological and pedagogical counselling
  • health care aiming to bio-politics

4
Modelling life
  • The demand of life-political expertise
  • to make people able to structure biographies and
    life-situations by using life-political methods
    in strategic contexts
  • Life-models are both pluralized and standardised
  • Life-course is seen as a biographic solution for
    systemic contradictions
  • Demands for self-reflexivity and
    self-referentiality (Luhmann)
  • Consciously constructed autobiographies
  • the production of socio-cultural identities as
    artefacts

5
Intimacy and publicity
  • The public confession of personal secrets an
    elementary aspect included in autobiographical
    genre
  • Tendency-like increased excitement between
    intimacy and publicity
  • reflexively organised self-identity - addressed
    toward self-actualisation
  • - consultation of life-stylistic choices
  • narrative construction of autobiographies which
    are worked out to be included in life-political
    programmes

6
Emancipating politics
  • Emancipating politics - politics of others
    (Giddens) - aimed at releasing underprivileged
    groups from their unhappy life-conditions
    (group-dynamics)
  • - elimination of social differences between
    citizen groups
  • - reducing exploitation cf. proceeding
    principles of social justice
  • - forwarding social equality decreasing
    inequalities
  • - participation as a responsibility for citizens

7
Life politics
  • Life politics - politics of individualism
  • Individual life chances
  • choices of life-styles
  • self-actualisation
  • Reflexive mobilisation of the self
  • - Giddens the formation of a self-identity is a
    reflexive achievement - the self-identity is
    consciously reflected in autobiographies as a
    narrative construction
  • Life-political principle the success of the
    individual self
  • not politics for the marginalised others
  • Welfare is seen as ones own achievement - not a
    common good

8
Postmodern ethics (Bauman)
  • Social responsibility and ethical choices
  • Can life-political experts take responsibility in
    moral questions (within the multitude of
    situational ethical codes)
  • Challenges for discursive subjectivity
  • ambivalent relativism in ethical issues
    (procedural ethics
  • New fixation to prejudices, egoist attitudes and
    conformism inside a consciously pre-fixed social
    contexts
  • Negotiated commitments based on options embedded
    in opportunities available for social winners
    who are most successful in certain social
    networks
  • The success of the self assessed and evaluated
    by means of impact-rating
  • option-like rewards promised to winners of
    life-games (life is a game)

9
The reflexive life handling of emotions as a
narrative strategy
  • Indicators of reflexive understanding of ones
    own life are increasingly demanded for
    life-political purposes
  • it becomes reasonable to ask why
  • because their capacity for living a better life
    is increased
  • or
  • because the threats of worsened intimate life and
    intimate relations
  • People are expected to handle their emotions, to
    manage the body treatment and to plan their
    life-course successfully
  • The narrative strategy for interpreting
    (good/bad) life becomes more and more important
    for ordinary people

10
Governmentality - practices for the self inside
the NPM
  • To shape, sculpt, mobilize and work through the
    choices, desires, aspirations, needs, wants and
    lifestyles of individuals and groups
  • To connect questions of government, politics and
    administration with the space of bodies, lives,
    selves and persons
  • To form linkages between questions of government,
    authority and politics, and questions of
    identity, self and person
  • To control ones body and mind regulations,
    ruling, steering systems
  • To govern our selves, characters and persons
    under the broader domain of conduct of conduct
    (of others, of ourselves)
  • See Mitchell Dean Governmentality Power and
    Rule in modern Society (2006
  • The technology of citizenship promoting active
    citizenship
  • Procedural ethics (the techne of the self)
  • Empowering citizens to become well-conducting
    persons
  • Qualitative transformation of forms of
    subjectivity adjustment for the demands of the
    individualized society
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