Anthropos
of Modernity


7pm Thursday
May 26th, 2011

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Dr. Paul
Rabinow

Professor of Anthropology

Paul Rabinow (1944-) is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California (Berkeley), Director of the Anthropology of the Contemporary Research Collaboratory (ARC), and Director of Human Practices for the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (SynBERC). He is perhaps most famous for his widely influential commentary and expertise on the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

His major works include Marking Time: On the Anthropology of the Contemporary (2007); Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment (2003); Essays on the Anthropology of Reason (1996), Making PCR: A Story of Biotechnology (1993); French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (1989); The Foucault Reader (1984), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (1983) (with H. Dreyfus); Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco (1977 & 2007).

"My work has consistently centered on modernity as a problem: problem for those seeking to live with its diverse forms, a problem for those seeking to advance
or resist modern projects of power and knowledge. This work has ranged from descendants of a Moroccan saint coping with the changes wrought by colonial and
post-colonial regimes, to the wide array of knowledges and power relations entailed in the great assemblage of social planning in France, to my work of the last decade on molecular biology and genomics.

I now call this approach an anthropology of reason. Anthropos + logos. Who are the humans at issue and what knowledges constitute them and help them to understand themselves and their environments.

My current research centers on developments in post-genomics and molecular diagnostics. It seeks to invent an analytic framework to understand the issues of bio-politics and bio-security. A related research interest is the contemporary moral terrain with special attention to 'affect.' "

Books by
Dr. Paul Rabinow