Science Education as a Site for Biopolitical Engagement and the Reworking of Subjectivities: Theoretical Considerations and Possibilities for Research

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Cultural Studies of Science Education book series (CSSE, volume 9)

Abstract

This chapter advocates viewing science education as a site for biopolitical struggles and the reworking of subjectivities. Such a perspective provides a framework that can unite various struggles for social justice and help educators and students intervene in the forces of what philosopher Michel Foucault calls biopower. This chapter draws from Foucauldian notions of biopolitics and subjectivity and the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, to provide some notes on biopolitical theory and potential applications in science education. This chapter is just one theoretical articulation of how biopolitics and biopolitical struggle can inform critical, activist work in science education. The full productive ‘value’ of biopolitical theory has yet to be realized.

Keywords

Biopolitics Biopower Science education Foucault Subjectivities Politics 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Agamben, G. (1998). Homo sacer. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  2. Althusser, L. (1998). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In J. Rivkin & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory, an anthology (pp. 294–304). Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  3. Amos, J. (2012, May 25). Africa and Australasia to share square kilometre array [On-line article]. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18194984. Accessed 25 May 2012.
  4. Barton, A. C. (2003). Teaching science for social justice. New York: Teachers College Press.Google Scholar
  5. Bazzul, J. (2012). Neoliberal ideology, global capitalism, and science education: Engaging the question of subjectivity. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7(4), 1001–1020. doi: 10.1007/s11422-012-9413-3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Bazzul, J. (2013, May). The ethical subject of science education. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association international conference, San Francisco, USA.Google Scholar
  7. Bencze, J. L. (2010). Exposing and deposing hyper-economized school science. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 5, 293–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bencze, J. L., & Carter, L. (2011). Globalizing students acting for the common good. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48, 648–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Bernauer, J., & Rasmussen, D. (Eds.). (1988). The final Foucault. Cambridge: MIT Press (Reprinted from Philosophy & Social Criticism, 12(2–3), 109–277).Google Scholar
  10. Brown, W. (2005). Edgework. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
  11. Butler, J. (1997). The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
  12. Butler, J. (2004). What is critique? An essay on Foucault’s virtue (2001). In S. Salih & J. Butler (Eds.), The Judith Butler reader (pp. 302–322). Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  13. Carter, L. (2011a). Gathering in threads in the insensible global world: The wicked problem of globalization and science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Carter, L. (Ed.). (2011b). Globalization and science education: Global and local issues. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6, 1–12.Google Scholar
  15. Deleuze, G. (1992, Winter). Post script to societies of control. October, 59(1992), 3–7.Google Scholar
  16. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex/gender: Biology in a social world. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  17. Fiske, J. (1998). Culture, ideology and interpellation. In J. Rivkin & M. Ryan (Eds.), Literary theory, an anthology (pp. 305–311). Malden: Blackwell.Google Scholar
  18. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
  19. Foucault, M. (1980). The history of sexuality. Vol. 1: An introduction. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
  20. Foucault, M. (1982). The subject and power. In H. L. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  21. Foucault, M. (1986). The care of the self (The history of sexuality, Vol. 3). New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
  22. Foucault, M., & Senellart, M. (2010). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
  23. Gerlach, N., et al. (2011). Becoming biosubjects: Bodies, systems, technologies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
  24. Harding, S. (2006). Science and social inequality: Feminist and postcolonial issues. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
  25. Hardt, M. (2010). The militancy of theory. The South Atlantic Quarterly, 110(1), 19–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  26. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  27. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2005). Multitude: War and democracy in the age of empire. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
  28. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
  29. Hodson, D. (2011). Looking to the future: Building a curriculum for social activism. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Irigaray, L., & Oberle, E. (1985). Is the subject of science sexed? Cultural Critique, 1(1), 73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Keller, E. F. (1996). The biological gaze. In G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis, & T. Putnam (Eds.), Future natural: Nature, science, culture (pp. 107–121). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
  32. Lather, P. (2012). The ruins of neoliberalism and the construction of a new (scientific) subjectivity. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 1021–1025. doi: 10.1007/s11422-012-9465-4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Lazzarato, M. (2002). From biopower to biopolitics. Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 13, 112–25. http://cms.gold.ac.uk/media/lazzarato_biopolitics.pdf. Accessed 29 Apr 2012.
  34. Lemke, J. (2011). The secret identity of science education: Masculine and politically conservative? Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6(2), 287–292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Lemke, T. (2011). Biopolitics: An advanced introduction. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
  36. Lewis, T. (2007). Biopolitical utopianism in educational theory. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39(7), 683–702. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00316.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  37. McKinley, E. (2008). From object to subject: Hybrid identities of indigenous women in science. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 3, 959–975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Milne, C. (2011). A convenient dichotomy: Critical eyes on the limits to biological knowledge. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6(2), 305–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Peters, M. (2004). Educational research: ‘Games of truth’ and the ethics of subjectivity. Journal of Educational Enquiry, 5(2), 50–63.Google Scholar
  40. Pierce, C. (2013). Education in the age of biocapitalism: Optimizing educational life for a flat world. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  41. Rabinow, P., & Rose, N. (2006). Biopower today. Biosocieties, 1, 195–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  42. Rose, N. S. (2007). Politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  43. Shiva, V., & Moser, I. (1995). Biopolitics: A feminist and ecological reader on biotechnology. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
  44. Siatras, A. (2012). Exploring the role of the science curriculum towards social justice. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education [CSSE], Waterloo, ON, Canada.Google Scholar
  45. Simons, M. (2006). Learning as investment: Notes on governmentality and biopolitics. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(4), 523–540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  46. Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the education of desire: Foucault’s History of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
  47. Tobin, K. (2011). Global reproduction and transformation of science education. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 6(1), 127–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  48. Weinstein, M. (2012). Science, science education and the politics of neoliberal exceptionality. In J. R. McGinnis, S. J. Lynch, W. C. Kyle, & T. A. Sondergeld (Eds.), Re-imagining research in 21st century science education for a diverse global community proceedings of the 2012 National Association of Research in Science Teaching international conference. Indianapolis: NARST e-Publications [CD-ROM].Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of STEM education and Teacher DevelopmentUniversity of Massachusetts DartmouthNorth DartmouthUSA

Personalised recommendations