Lecture 1

By Prof. Alexander V. Oleskin, General Ecology Dept., School of Biology, Moscow State Univ.

ОПЕРАТОР UPDATE С ВЛОЖЕННЫМ ЗАПРОСОМ

ОБНОВЛЕНИЕ ВСЕХ СТРОК

Предложение where в операторе update является необязательным. Если оно опущено, то обновляются все строки целевой таблицы. Например:

В отличие от оператора delete, в котором предложение where практически никогда не опускается, оператор update и без предложения where выполняет полезную функцию. Он применяется, в основном, для общего обновления всей таблицы, что было продемонстрировано в предыдущем примере.

В операторе update, так же как и в операторе delete, вложенные запросы могут играть важную роль, поскольку они дают возможность отбирать строки для обновления, опираясь на информацию из других таблиц. Ниже приведены примеры операторов update, в которых используются вложенные запросы:

Вложенные запросы в предложении where оператора update, так же как и в операторе delete, могут иметь любой уровень вложенности и содержать внешние ссылки на целевую таблицу оператора update. Имя столбца empl _ NUm во вложенном запросе предыдущего примера является такой внешней ссылкой; она относится к столбцу empl _ NUm той строки таблицы salesreps, которая проверяется в настоящий момент оператором update. Вложенный запрос в этом примере является связанным вложенным запросом.

Внешние ссылки часто встречаются во вложенных запросах оператора update, поскольку они реализуют объединение между таблицами (таблицей) вложенного запроса и целевой таблицей оператора update. Для оператора update справедливо то же самое ограничение стандарта SQL1, что и для оператора delete: имя целевой таблицы не может присутствовать в предложении from вложенного запроса на любом уровне вложенности. Это предотвращает ссылки из вложенных запросов на целевую таблицу (часть строк которой уже может быть модифицирована). Таким образом, все ссылки во вложенных запросах на целевую таблицу являются внешними ссылками на ту строку целевой таблицы, которая проверяется в данный момент предложением where оператора update. В стандарте SQL2 это ограничение также устраняется и устанавливается, что ссылка на целевую таблицу во вложенном запросе считается ссылкой на исходную целевую таблицу, в которой еще не были сделаны какие-либо обновления.

I’m glad to welcome all students to my course of lectures. It seems to be an elective subject, i.e. you feel free to decide whether or not to attend my lectures. If this is the case, I appreciate your interest in my subject called “biopolitics”. This introductory lecture provides a general overview of biopolitics, a modern interdisciplinary field located on the border between the life sciences and political science. A course of lectures should begin with the definition of their subject. In the most general sense, biopolitics stands for the totality of all kinds of interactions between the life sciences and politics, including both the political potential of biology and the biological implications of politics (see below for details). This definition sounds somewhat sophisticated and perhaps even mind-boggling. Its meaning should gradually become clear to you as the course of lectures unfόlds.

Why does this novel field of science get so much attention presently? The reason is that, in the 21st century, biology exerts a considerable influence on the humanities and social sciences, as well as on the whole human society. You are students of the Global Studies Department. Therefore, you are probably familiar with some important recent global political developments that involve biology. Biology is expected to produce both positive and negative effects on the global scale in terms of the people’s wellfare. On the one hand, people around the world pin their hopes on biology which can help overcome the impending ecological crisis. Biology hopefully can provide us with recipes for coping with problems caused by environmental deterioration. Humankind has been destroying the planet and life on it since the beginning of the Modern Age. I needn’t really go into details while talking about such familiar issues as the pollution of water, soil and air or the extinction of a multitude of plant and animal species under the influence of short-sighted, exploitative human civilization. The shrinking world currently requires sound biological knowledge that could inform global political decisions aimed at improving the threatening environmental situation. The conceptual underpinnings of environment-friendly policies are an important subfield of biopolitics, and some global biopolitical organizations focus on them. An example is the Biopolitics International Organisation whose headquarters are located in the nice southern town of Athens. Nevertheless, biopolitics does not only boil down to political efforts for protecting the environment and improving the global ecological situation.

Now I’d like you to get actively involved in this discussion. What’s the reason that biology is so influential nowadays, apart from ecology?

A large number of people – definitely over one billion globally ­ suffer from starvation or at least undernourishment. This certainly concerns the 3^rd world countries. Currently, biologists promise to help these people by producing new kinds of cheap food. I have in mind biotechnologically produced food items such as cultivated edible fungi such as the oyster fungus, the champignon, or the Japanese specialty shii-take. When it comes to preventing starvation, taste is a less important matter. Therefore, microbiologists plan to cultivate tasteless (though improved with spices and taste-enhancing additives) bacterial biomass. One food expert tasted bacteria and stressed that they “have all the makings of the food of the future. They have neither taste nor flavor nor structure”. Notwithstanding these problems, this is an indisputably positive aspect of biology’s impact on the present-day world. But this is only one side of the coin.

People around the globe are also concerned about possible risks associated with recent biological developments. Primarily, potential threats are posed by genetic engineering. I hope you know that genetic engineering aims to change the genetic information of living organisms ranging from bacteria to plants to animals to humans. Genetic engineers insert new genes that for instance, make trees shine in the dark when the air contains toxic gases used as chemical weapons. Genetic engineers cause much concern because they potentially can produce dangerous monsters and cloned humans, since they have already succeeded in cloning animals including dheep, pigs, and the cat called Copycat. Has anyone of you watched the famous movie about cloning Hitler? Political and legal regulations are mandatory for coping with such potentially threatening developments related to modern biology and, more specifically, to its subfield called genetics. For instance, genetic engineering raises political issues such as whether all substances obtained from GM organisms must be labeled. Russia’s government has quite recently adopted a law to this effect, and all GM-enriched goods are really labeled. The USA has so far refused to introduce GM product labeling because one is afraid this might reduce the profits of companies\s that manufacture and market GM organism-containing products. Another important question to raise is which political regulations are to be adopted with respect to genetic diagnostics and therapy. Importantly, genetic therapy is curing hereditary diseases by changing the DNA. It “raises many policy issues regarding what role the government ought to play in encouraging or discouraging such research and application” (Blank & Hines, 2001, p.90). Moreover, genetic therapy applied to practically healthy people becomes genetic enhancement -- “making people still better”. Studies with mice models demonstrated that gene insertion could, e.g., improve their memory.

Another important example is provided by human brain neuromediators that are on the agenda of present-day neurology. Neuromediators perform major functions in various animals, plants, and even microbial cells. Abnormally high or low brain concentrations of neuromediators (more precisely, the increased/decreased activity of neuromediator-dependent brain systems) may result in serious mental problems such as depression and inadequate (e.g., aggressive) behavior and cause negative ethical, legal, and political consequences. There is good evidence that a low level of serotonin in the brain causes severe depression associated with anxiety, anger, and uncontrollable impulsive behavior.The knowledge concerning neuromediators is a prerequisite for developing neurochemical tools for manipulating human behavior, in particular in order to attain political goals.

However, both the positive and the negative aspects of the influence of biology on global politics do not exhaust the whole subject matter of biopolitics. You all focus on global studies that are closely related to the social sciences and the humanities. Therefore, you probably should find fascinating that biology is being increasingly applied to issues related to ethics, linguistics, esthetics, history, and politics. These interactions between biology, on the one hand, and various social sciences, on the other, result in the formation of new borderline disciplines such as

· Bioethics, “the study of ethical problems arising from biological research and its applications in such fields as organ transplantation, genetic engineering, or artificial insemination” (Collins English Dictionary, 2003).

· Biosemiotics that “studies communication and signification in living systems… Moreover, it considers communication as the essence of life.” (Sharov, 1998).

· Bioesthetics (bioaesthetics), the subject of a recent work by Irina V. Botvinko (2011, p.94). She emphasized that, “in addition to its political and ethical dimensions, life is also of interest in terms of aesthetics. We enjoy the beauty of flowers, starfish, tiny foraminifers, and other life forms. …The aesthetics of life is related to its harmony, symmetry, and fractal geometry”.

The bio-humanities deal with all possible interactions of the life sciences with social sciences and the humanities, irrespective of their relevance to politics. For example, linguists draw analogies between biological evolution and the evolution of languages. Moreover, it is possible to use data concerning communication between animals or plants (biocommunication) to improve our knowledge of the laws governing the development of human languages.

And now we’re coming back to biopolitics.

Biopolitics interacts with other interdisciplinary subfields of the bio-humanities and there are many overlapping areas of research. For instance, a large number of the problems faced by society relate both to biopolitics and bioethics (exemplified by modern genetic technologies and environmental concerns).

A hallmark of our time is the increasing interaction between the bio-humanities (and biopolitics as their part) and modern psychology. Evolution-molded behaviors that are partly common to humans and other animals receive increasing attention from psychiatrists who evaluate the psychological status of an individual and can diagnose mental disorders. Both of biopolitical and psychological interest are biobehavioral (ethological) studies of political leaders’ behavior. Although we shall discuss this subject in much more detail in one of the following lectures, I should emphasize that biopoliticians compare human and animal behavior including typical facial expressions displayed both by humans such as the former US president Bush and, for instance, by the chimpanzee.

The political system including the state apparatus has been actively regulating the biology of its subjects/citizens over the course of several centuries. Measures have been taken to register and control their birth rate, morbidity, work capacity, and mortality. These state policies also form part of biopolitics, as emphasized by the prominent 20^th century scholar Michel Foucault and his followers.

Foucault and his followers (Agamben, Lazzarato, Negri, Hardt, and others) emphasized the impact of the political system on the biology of the humans involved. According to Foucault’s lectures, the political systems of Western Europe developed a system of dispositifs, i.e., practical measures and tools to monitor (using censes and other demographic methods) and control human reproduction (obstetricians and, more recently, family planning centers), health and morbidity (health care institutions, sanitation, and hygiene), work capacity (education, safety regulations, and, much more recently, human engineering), and mortality (funeral institutions), as well as the environment. It was in the 18^th century that “the first demographers began to measure these phenomena in statistical terms” (Foucault, 2003 [1976]).Hence the disciplinary measures that had been in use starting from the 17^th century in Europe and dealt with human behavior on the individual level using boarding schools, barracks, prisons, hospitals, and the like were supplemented with policies aimed at monitoring the demographic variables of the population and controlling them.

According to Foucault and his followers, biopolitics, therefore, is concerned with the effects produced by the political system on the biology of its citizens/subjects. In Foucault’s works, the term “biopolitics” is used as a synonym for another term, “ biopower ”. Biopower exercized by the political system of a state includes regulatory measures aimed at optimizing the biological characteristics and the work capacity of the population or, at least, maintaining them within the normal limits. Defining such concepts as “normal” or “abnormal” is also within the competence of biopower-exercizing bodies. “Abnormalities” of all kinds are to be eliminated, including “aberrant” individuals that belong to “inferior” races; this is the meaning of the notion “racism” in Foucault’s words. In addition, individuals whose bodies or minds deviate from what is considered “normal”, including disabled people, deformed children, and the insane, should also be removed from society by isolating and, if possible, rehabilitating them. “… Disability is comprised of the innumerable aspects of social life that impose restrictions on disabled people, including personal prejudice, inaccessible public buildings, unusable public transportation systems, segregated education, exclusionary workplace arrangements, and so on” (M. Oliver’s views summarized by Shelley Tremain, 2008, p. 104).

Michel Foucault (2003) predicted that biopower (biopolitics) would have new opportunities once “it became technologically and politically possible for man not only to manage life but to make it proliferate, to create living matter, to build the monster, and, ultimately, to build viruses that cannot be controlled and that are universally desctructive”. In the light of recent advances in the field of artificial human reproduction and cloning, it is to be expected that the biological element of the human being will no longer be considered natural in the future because it will become in part artificial. Recent advances in genetic engineering as well as other novel biological technologies are expected to enable us to create human individuals with intentionally modified features (“designer babies”).

Modern surgery is also making its contribution to the purposeful modification of the human body aimed at “normalizing” and “optimizing” people in the interest of biopower. Surgical techniques, apart from treating diseases, are increasingly used with healthy individuals in an attempt to bring their bodies closer to perfection.

Taken together, these facts suggest that biopower, in addition to partly removing the boundaries between nature and culture, the natural and the artificial, also remove the boundaries between the norm and the pathology as well as between health and disease. Bad mood, spleen, and depression are considered sufficient reasons for visiting a doctor that prescribes anti-depressant drugs such as Prozac. Healthy people also take “lifestyle medication” also including Prozac as well as Viagra and other drug preparations. Drug manufacturers exercize their own biopolitics: they persuade people to search for problems in their own body: they “market diseases and then sell drugs to treat these diseases” (Conrad, 2005, p.5). Gene engineering and other anthropotechnologies (technologies that modify the body) represent the culmination of the trend that existed in Europe, according to Foucault, starting from the 18^th century, and resulted in the increasing influence of the political system on human biology

In sum, recent achievements in the field of genetic, neuro-, and behavioral technologies are expected to provide the political elite with novel tools for regulating the biology of the population to the point of assuming total control over human reproduction, the population’s gene pool (by compiling genetic records for every citizen), and each citizen’s brain (the prospective “Neurosociality” system). These could surpass the innovations described in the utopian novels by Huxley, Orwell, and other writers of the 20^th century.

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