The Center

GENERAL OBJECTIVE OF THE CENTER

The general objective of the Center: The proposal for the establishment of “Biopolitics” Research Center (RECEBI) aims to create a multidisciplinary International Research Center of the Department of Sociology, which will consist of academics, independent researchers, postgraduate/doctoral researchers and post-doctoral scientists. The general aim is primary:

• to conduct research projects and consultancy in the field of biopolitics,
• the research and the justification of extensive social and political issues, from which ‘biopolitics models’ are de- rived,
• funding projects relevant to the biopolitical

The research program of the proposed Center in the field of sociological theory is determined by the “articulation of life and “social phenomena”, as it happens with the concept of social organization during the 19th century, or the distinction between nature and culture within the 20th century. For this purpose the research program of the Center specifies the use of the term “biopolitics”, through at least three international domains of analysis. These include:

• the critical position in the Italian and German political philosophy
• the thorough research in social sciences and the economic-historical studies in France,
• the anthropological stimulation in the development of science in England and the United

THE RESEARCH CENTER’S PORTRAIT

The surveys are organized into seven groups that reflect the diversity of approaches in the Centre:

• political theory and philosophy,
• international politics,
• public policy and economics,
• quantitative political economy,
• political economy of peace and security,
• self-governance,
• comparative discourse analysis and aesthetics

The open and inclusive research, is designed to lead the dialogue between theories, approaches and ideologies, to bring together professors, researchers, graduate students, PhD candidates and Post- Doctoral Researchers in a collaborative and supportive environment with contributions to

• regular and extraordinary meetings
• seminars
• annual symposia

THEORETICAL IMPULSES

The term “biopolitics” inserted in the title of the proposed research center as a result of a series of influences in the field of Sociology, economics, history, and above all in the social and political philosophy with a strong presence of the great French philosopher of the 20th century Michel Foucault. This synthesis is the result of the above multidisciplinary series of past and recent stimuli. One influence was manifested at the dawn of the 21st century and concerns the way of ‘modeling’ the vital phenomena, defined by a sweeping way of social organization, which answers the question how the policy changes reflected in the level of knowledge.

Another influence is the international reputation that was given to the term “biopolitics” which was related, during the past decades, with societies that are no longer closed, while their structure is captured through expert research,  based on statistical data. For population, national financial performance, resistance movements, changes based on the right to life, the position in society and finally the respect for culture. In the most resonant extension of political concept, beyond the State borders, policy addresses the life and then everything can become “biopolitics”: every social phenomenon is a direct  translation of ‘ vital phenomenon for societies.

The focus of  biopolitics emerged, with particular intensity at the end of the 20th century, in different areas of the world. These areas highlighted and then formed the ‘intergovernmental ‘ logic: this is the principle of  “less government”, which  aims at maximum effectiveness, taking into account the natural character of the problems that must be  addressed  by  modern States. The “less governance is at  the heart of the philosophical challenge as part of the forms of “liberal govermentalism”. It was brought up in the European philosophical thought during the 18th century and particularly emerged the position of “political economy”. A strong impetus to the “birth of Biopolitics” will be given through the implementation of contemporary  social  research and specifically in the series of courses handed by Michel Foucault in “College de France”, from January to April 1979.

The questions concern the following:

the distinguishing characteristics of the liberal ‘art’ of Governance, as it appears in the 18th
the different places where the term “govermentalism” is manifested
how the leading societies are shaped after the revisions of liberal
the research of these schools of thought which are able to take diagnostic role in respect of “society” and “governance”.
The relevant quote of M. Foucault enhances the short formulation of theoretical questions that reinforce our proposal for the creation of the Research Centre of Biopolitics: «[…] the financial world is inherently non – transparent and non-ultimate. Initially, it consists of views, the multiplicity of which is both more inalienable as precisely it ensures spontaneously and ultimately their divergence. Economy is a godless theory • economics is a theory without God • economics is a theory without wholeness • economics is a theory that begins to reveal not only the obsolesce, but the impossibility of a dominant viewpoint, a viewpoint of the sovereign on the wholeness of the state that should govern. The economy is absorbing from the legal form of the state sovereign and produces the essential of a society, named ‘economic processes’. Liberalism in its modern constitution, was created when the incompatible relation- ship between non-ultimate diversity that characterizes the under- lying interest, the “financial subjects’, and the ultimate section of the legal sovereign”.

DIRECTIONS OF THE CENTER’S CONSTITUTION

“Biopolitics” forms the research nature of the Centre as to the role of methodological management of liberalism in the widest possible range: as a form of systematic and thorough social regulation from bureaucracy, as a transitional model of market rationality in non-economic areas such as family, birth rate and delinquency; as a cultural perception that secularizes major principles; as a cross-sectional of every liberal governance model, where applicable; as a liberal utopia which degenerates into a rational management technology (:the possible maximum efficiency with the least possible intervention or care).

The connection of policy, philosophy, economy, draws ideas outside their borders and uses a variety of methodologies, including “case studies”, historical and analytical examples, regulatory theory and policy evaluation.

The establishment of interdisciplinary research center of Bio- politics reveals and defines the extensive social, political and economic, changes resulting from fundamental questions about the human perspective of management at local, national and international level.

The understanding and assessment of the State capacity, markets and communities in addressing the social problems arising from the administration, requires a pluralistic approach, open to ideas from different disciplines, theories and research methods.

The coexistence of new, evolving and mature researchers, through the establishment and operation of the Research Center, intends to enable their output to the connection that biopolitics borns as a genealogy of power/ knowledge relationship, integrated in the historical and social context.

The “methodology” of governance, from its origins back in the 18th century as liberalism, the subsequent criticism as “excessive governance” and the criticism in the ‘excessive State’, constitute the starting point for the research approach throughout the range of management.