Rethinking the social contract

People give up their natural freedom

in favor of the state
The latter thus is delegated
legitimate political authority
The state becomes a sovereign
guarantor of people’s rights as
citizens and a provider of the benefits
citizenship imply

Plato, Hobbes, Lock, Rousseau

Political citizenship in 19th century
Social citizenship in 20th century

“A new kind of citizenship is taking

shape in the age of biomedicine,
biotechnology and genomics. We
term this ‘biological citizenship’.”
(Rose and Novas, 2005:439)
Citizens’ life as an equivalent of its
biological worth- a central value of the
reshaped citizens-state contract (Rose,
2007)
“It is not so much the power over life
which is at stake here but rather the
power of life as such” (Fassin, 2009:52)
From citizens’ “right to health” to health
as a means for achieving citizens’ rights
1)Biological citizenship in Ukraine after the Chernobyl
catastrophe- irradiated people’s health becomes an
exchange currency for bargaining for compensation
and aid from the state authorities: “the very idea of
citizenship is now charged with the superadded
burden of survival… a large and largely impoverished
segment of the population has learned to negotiate
the terms of its economic and social inclusion using
the very constituent matter of life” (Petryna, 2002:5)

2) Biological citizenship in France- the opportunity for

undocumented immigrants to receive civil rights and
access to health care if they suffer a severe disease:
‘It is the disease which kills me that has become my
reason for living now’ (Fassin, 2009:53)
Therapeutic citizenship (Nguyen, 2005):

- Individual’s health status as a baseline for the

establishment of new social relationships;
- Citizens’ rights are no longer of the
competence of a single state but involve
recognition from international actors- the role of
NGOs and commercial sector in the distribution
of ARV drugs
The disciplining power of the state over
citizens replaced by the implicit recreation
of choices and modified behaviors of
individuals

Ethopolitics: “By ethopolitics, I refer to

attempts to shape the conduct of human
beings by acting upon their sentiments,
beliefs and values- in short, by acting on
ethics” (Rose, 2007:27)
Fassin, D. (2009) Another politics of life is possible. Theory, culture and Society
26:44-60
Foucault, M. (1995) Discipline and punish: the birth of prison. New York: Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group
Morris, C. (ed) (1999) Critical essays on Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. The social
contract therorists. [on-line book] Rowman and Littlefield: Lanham. Available:
http://books.google.bg/books?id=BMGs6l_qKjsC&pg=PA99&dq=social+contract+state+c

Nguyen, V.K. (2005) Antiretroviral globalism, biopolitics and therapeutic

citizenship. In Ong, A. and Collier, S.J. (eds) Global assemblages: technology,
politics and ethics as anthropological problems. Oxford: Blackwell
Petryna, A. (2002) Life exposed: biological citizens after Chernobyl. Princeton:
Princeton University Press
Rose, N. (2007) The politics of life itself. Biomedicine, power and subjectivity in the
twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press
Rose, N. and Novas, C. (2005) Biological Citizenship. . In Ong, A. and Collier, S.J.
(eds) Global assemblages: technology, politics and ethics as anthropological
problems. Oxford: Blackwell
Do you agree/disagree that other actors (NGOs,
commercial sector) bare as much as or even more
biopower than the state itself nowadays?
“This complex of marketization, autonomization
and responsibilization gives a particular character
to the contemporary politics of life in advanced
liberal democracies” (Rose, 2007:4)

Do you share Nikolas Rose’s view that health has

become “not normality but normativity” (Rose,
2007:84)