- Between weeks 8 and 12, each student should provide a weekly reflection (500 words) on the data you have collected to date.
- What data did you collect?
- What is your initial impression of the data?
- How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed your thinking about your research project?
- What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
- What are your next steps?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/46639277/Jang_YooJin___Health_2.0__A_Symptom_of_Neoliberal_Healthcare.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1557805606&Signature=g%2BUPOPs4i%2FMInhYjo0uEZTBMt%2FE%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DHealth_2.0_A_Symptom_of_the_Neoliberal_H.pdf
“Biopower is concerned with the behaviour of the bodies in one dimension, and in the other it deals with governing the biological
vitality; that is, the socio-economic productivity of the population. Biopolitical governmentality,
therefore, is the act of governing the population by rendering the activeness, usefulness and
docility of the body so as to expropriate its productive force, and supervising and regulating the
life (“History of” 135). Biopower later expanded to include more general issues that concern the
biological bodies; life, health, race, or space of existence.” – pg. 7
“Subjectivation works in accordance with the power to achieve a certain type of healthiness, happiness or wisdom
(Foucault “Technologies” 18-9). Biopolitical governments constantly evaluate the population in
relation to norms and rules; for instance, to assess whether they subjectivate themselves
according to the norm of healthiness (“Abnormal” 47). Therefore, by pointing out how the
population is voluntarily normalising themselves by constant examination and surveillance, it
becomes apparent that the concept of governmentality offers opportunities to discern what we,
as the subjects, accept as norms and believe to be true. ” pg. 8
“For example, social campaigns on AIDS can negotiate the norm and stereotypes around the people who have AIDS or HIV by, for instance, changing the language
that is used to describe them. A simple change of word from ‘victims’ to ‘survivors’ is capable of
transforming the normalised conceptions of people living with HIV/AIDS (ibid.). It is selfevident that such framing of a certain illness or a state of health can engender different attitudes
shown towards the patients, not to mention that they will have different social and political
relationships with others members of society. The relationship that patients have with fellow
patients, the public and medical practitioners, and also the relationship between citizens and
governmental institutions in the healthcare sector is negotiable. ” pg. 9
“This mode of thought is also vitally linked to neoliberal human capital theory, especially the work of Gary Becker of Chicago
School, which contributed to theorising American neoliberalism (Dilts 130). Human capital
theory views human as means of production that produces economic return, and whose
productivity is increased by investments such as education and healthcare (Becker). Individuals
are entrepreneurs of the self, and all human activities are redefined through economic logic,
including investment, consumption or production (Dilts 130).” pg. 11
-What I have found in this reading is a bit more comprehensive understanding of what is going on behind the logic of our healthcare system. But what I seem to be finding is that there are many points where the logic turns against itself. The idea of biopower and human capital seem to be intimately linked. Human capital will produce higher economic return the healthier the human capital is because this will in turn cause them to be more productive. Using people as a force to generate productivity is a common theme amongst biopower and human capital. If all individuals are entrepreneurs of the self, and we want a more efficient, stable, economy and work force, why wouldn’t we want the people to of a country to be more aware of their bodies? There seems to be a major paradox within these ideas and how inefficient our healthcare system is as doing its job. Also the ideas of putting different labels among different diseases and the power of this is extremely interesting and extremely linked to consciousness based healing. This essay also covers what the author calls health 2.0, which is how health has entered into social media, the internet, etc. and how people turn to these things to save money. If more time was invested into health 2.0, and more time invested in creating a population whose awareness of their bodies is stronger, this must result in a more productive population