Topologies of Immunity, University of Exeter, April 10th 2014

Last week's fantastic 'Topologies of Immunity' workshop at the University of Exeter began with a keynote from Warwick Anderson (whose new 2014 paper is here, and absolutely worth a read for anybody interested in discussions of globalisation, biovalue and postcoloniality. Anderson's a self-termed 'postcolonial bore', but the paper is anything but boring). His keynote, Getting Ahead of One’s Self, discussed the last part of his new book Intolerant Bodies – A short history of autoimmunity. Co-authored with Ian McKay, the book offers a reflection on the cultural relevance of immunity. As in the book, Anderson's talk argued for a more generous understanding of immunitary logic, inclusive of philosophical and cultural reflections of immunology.

The keynote was held in Building:One's Bateman Lecture Theatre

The talk was a perfect ramp into a lively afternoon of discussion. Chaired by Professor Gail Davies, the workshop began with a lively paper from Jamie Lorimer and Richard Grenyer, that explored methodological issues in how to conceptualise and measure the 'micriobiogeographies' of the biomes we live in. Nadine Levin offered some important thoughts on the normative assumptions of data-intensive scientific work at the intersection of metabolism and immunology ('good' bacteria, and the 'healthy' microbiome.) 

The workshop was also an opportunity for the first outing of a paper Nik Brown and I have put together on the internationalised immunitary regimes of public and private cord blood banking and transplant. Using Roberto Esposito's conceptual work around immunitas and communitas, the paper argues that the cord blood paradigm confounds our current understandings of national solidarism and pernicious, 'selfish' marketisation of human tissue. 

University of Exeter

Astrid Schrader's paper gave a fantastic overview of harmful algal blooms known as red tides, and scientific work done around understanding programmed cell death (the fantastic title of the paper was 'suicidal microbial communities'). The paper toyed with conceptions of the temporality of death, and how we come to understand cells as - paradoxically - committing 'suicide'.

Artist Helen Scalway explored the use of materials in her work. She also touched upon some of the challenges she's been confronted with in understanding, representing, uniting and separating parts, pieces, shapes and movements. Along with an opportunity to see some interesting art (something I never really encounter), the space for an 'artist response' was vital in illuminating the role of metaphor in this discussion. I mean this particularly in regards to the necessary transposition of ideas across vital, political, and material platforms (or topologies), when we discuss immunity.

Nigel Clark's closing remarks tied the event together nicely. Noting that we were all about to exit the room as the singular individuals we'd been on entry, he made it clear that our ideas of flow and globalisation, sharing and hybridity, make very little sense without an appreciation of locality, location and more-and-less material borders. Importantly, he also raised a matter that hadn't been made explicit in any of the papers during the day. Politically, the matters explored here are all very fecund. But what can we do with immunity? What doors are opened and closed by thinking about the world through this lens? The philosophy of immunity is, I think, going to be taking up much of my own conceptual energy for some time to come.

Paper at BSA Race and Ethnicity Study Group Conference 2014 - Mapping the Field: Contemporary Theories of Race, Racism and Ethnicity

The BSA Race and Ethnicity study group conference was held today at Newman University in Birmingham. You can see the full programme of events here.

The two plenary addresses from John Solomos (the now Head of Department at my first university, Warwick) and Nira Yuval-Davis, opened the day with the former arguing that research on migration must more heavily focus on the history of, and sociology of, race and ethnicity. Yuval-Davis argued that, contrarily, migration studies - which she posited started as its own strand - is now gradually moving more toward race and ethnicity studies. They raised some interesting points; Yuval-Davis suggested that we might think of footballer Anelka's recent quenelle gesture as a chance to reconsider what we think of as the boundaries of mimicry and satire; Solomon insisted that university teaching (though less a focus than ever because of the REF) is key in the future development of race and ethnicity studies. It has, he said, made significant headway as it gradually becomes a more defined feature on the sociological landscape through its central inclusion in undergraduate modules.

BSA Race and Ethnicity Study Group Conference 2014

I presented a paper on the Race and Technology panel. You can see the abstract for my talk "Untwisting the cords: exploring the political value(s) of race in British umbilical cord blood stem cell policy" here. I was joined by two other speakers: David Skinner and Sanjay Sharma.

David Skinner from Anglia Ruskin University presented a theoretical paper that positioned border control technologies and DNA data banks like the UK's Police DNA database as implicitly racialised technologies. For instance, whilst the DNA database might not immediately appear as such, its composition compels us to question its neutrality (it is comprised mainly of black, male DNA). He argued that sociology must move forward, past a concern with what science says about race, to how the technologies that buttress that science enact race. (Not least, I suppose, because the foundations of biosciences often rest on considerably less sexy areas of exploration. I think particularly of Star's call to study boring things in this case! [FYI, none of it is actually boring once you start looking at it].)

The other paper in this panel, presented by Sanjay Sharma, looked toward social networking sites such as twitter, and how race can be performed in these spaces. Based on his paper, the presentation underscored the role of technologies in the formation of subjectivities, and argued that phenomena like blacktags are written, reproduced, and consumed in ways that move beyond our assumptions of a preconstituted black user of the internet. Online platforms are, he argued, techno-cultural assemblages in which groups that can appear congealed and impenetrable, or dispersed and loose, are often attached by thin strands of connection that allow data to travel beyond their originally intended audience and loosen their seemingly coherent meanings.

A great mix of postgrads and professors, coffee and croissants, and everything in between. A brilliantly organised and thought-provoking day.