Observación sindrómica. Gestión de la vida en el Siglo XXI

Enrique Baleriola Escudero

doi:10.5565/rev/athenea.2325

Syndromic observation. Life’s management in the 21st century

Authors

Enrique Baleriola Escudero Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2899-6316

Abstract

The present work is an extract-summary of the doctoral thesis I defended last September entitled Security and Surveillance. Management of Life in the 21st Century, framed in a theoretical framework that mixes the Social Studies of Science and Technology, the Theory of the Actor-Network and other concepts from philosophy, anthropology and sociology. From a qualitative methodology, using a case study focused on the semiotic-material analysis of biosecurity and biomonitoring in the European Union, I offer a review of the concept of biopolitics indicating its obsolescence and its insufficiency to take account for the events that have occurred since the first years of the 21st century. For this reason, in this article I compile the central concept of the thesis: syndromic observation, exposing both the field where it originates and the reasons which led me to coin it as a better answer than biopolitics as a tool to analyze how life is managed contemporarily.

Keywords

Surveillance, Security, Life, Syndromic Observation, Biopolitics, Epidemics

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Author Biography

Enrique Baleriola Escudero, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso. PhD in Person and Society in the Contemporary World (2017) at Social Psychology Department, Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). My dissertation is about the pandemics and biosurveillance intelligences carried out by European Union and other institutions like CDC, ECDC or WHO. The aim is to understand how these intelligences are conceived by society, in his whole spectrum: scientists, physicians, epidemiological agents, governments and states, lay-people, etc.

I'm MA in Psychosocial research and intervention (2014) by the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Psychology degree by the University of Almería. My research topics are: Actor-Network Theory, Studies of Science and Technology, Biopolitics, Epidemics and Biosurveillance.