Download or read book Social Theory and Human Biotechnology written by Tim Owen and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is intended as a contribution towards metatheoretical development as part of the post-postmodern 'return to' sociological theory associated with Robert Sibeon (1996, 1999, 2004, 2007), Derek Layder (1997, 2004, 2007), Nicos Mouzelis (1991, 1993, 1995, 2007), Margaret Archer (1995, 1998) and Owen [2006a, 2006b, 2007a, 2007b] in tandem with a study of some of the sociological and ethical implications of selected examples of human biotechnology. The examples include the Human Genome Project, and related areas of interest such as reproductive biotechnology; the attempts to develop a biological sociology by writers of the 'embodied' school; and what Powell and Owen (2005) term 'the biomedical model'. The book is also intended to contribute towards 'building bridges' between post-modern metatheory and biological science.
Download or read book Decentering Biotechnology written by Michael S. Carolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Decentering Biotechnology explores the nature of technology, objects and patent law. Investigating the patenting of organic life and the manner in which artifacts of biotechnology are given their object-ive appearance, Carolan details the enrollment mechanisms that give biotechnology its momentum. Drawing on legal judgements and case studies, this fascinating book examines the nature of object-ification, as a thought and a thing, without which biotechnology, as it is done today, would not be possible. Unable to reject biotechnology per se, recognizing that such a rejection would essentialize the very object-ive categories shown to be manufactured, Carolan ultimately argues for doing biotechnology differently. A theoretically sophisticated analysis of the nature of objects and the role of technology as a form of life which shapes the social landscape, Decentering Biotechnology engages with questions of power, globalization, development, resistance, exclusion, and participation that arise from treating biological objects differently from conventional property forms. As such, it will appeal to social theorists, sociologists and philosophers, as well as scholars of law and science and technology studies.
Download or read book New Evolutionary Social Science written by Heinz-Jurgen Niedenzu and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social scientists have long declared their autonomy from the natural sciences, and in doing so have tended to neglect important biological constraints on human nature. Many sociological theories have suggested a nearly complete malleability of patterns of social life. The New Evolutionary Social Science challenges this view by building on Stephen K. Sanderson's 'Darwinian conflict theory' which sets out to synthesise sociological theories with key findings from biology into an overarching scientific paradigm. Configuring and expanding this groundbreaking theory, the contributors to this volume are well-known European and American experts in evolutionary science. The New Evolutionary Social Science develops a new basis for understanding social change and the world's future through a better integration of the natural and social sciences.
Download or read book Criminological Theory written by T. Owen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-04-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age of rapid advances in behavioural genetics, this book applies a unique genetic-social framework to the study of crime and criminal behaviour. Drawing upon evidence from evolutionary psychology and behavioural genetics, it offers an up-to-date and balanced account of the mutuality between genes and environment.
Download or read book Biotechnology and Culture written by Paul Brodwin and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biotechnology and Culture Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics Edited by Paul Brodwin Untangles the broad cultural effects of biotechnologies "A timely and perceptive look from many acute angles, at some of the most anxiety producing issues of the day." --Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley "This impressive collection offers a number of rich examples of why the development of anthropological studies of science, technology, and their disruptive social effects is a leading edge of critical enquiry." --Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University As birth, illness, and death increasingly come under technological control, struggles arise over who should control the body and define its limits and capacities. Biotechnologies turn the traditional "facts of life" into matters of expert judgment and partisan debate. They blur the boundary separating people from machines, male from female, and nature from culture. In these diverse ways, they destroy the "gold standard" of the body, formerly taken for granted. Biotechnologies become a convenient, tangible focus for political contests over the nuclear family, legal and professional authority, and relations between the sexes. Medical interventions also transform intimate personal experience: giving birth, building new families, and surviving serious illness now immerse us in a web of machines, expert authority, and electronic images. We use and imagine the body in radically different ways, and from these emerge new collective discourses of morality and personal identity. Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics brings together historians, anthropologists, cultural critics, and feminists to examine the broad cultural effects of technologies such as surrogacy, tissue-culture research, and medical imaging. The moral anxieties raised by biotechnologies and their circulation across class and national boundaries provide other interdisciplinary themes for discourse in these essays. The authors favor complex social dramas of the refusal, celebration, or ambivalent acceptance of new medical procedures. Eschewing polemics or pure theory, contributors show how biotechnology collides with everyday life and reshapes the political and personal meanings of the body. Contributors include Paul Brodwin, Lisa Cartwright, Thomas Csordas, Gillian Goslinga-Roy, Deborah Grayson, Donald Joralemon, Hannah Landecker, Thomas Laqueur, Robert Nelson, Susan Squier, Janelle Taylor, and Alice Wexler. Paul Brodwin, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin, is the author of Medicine and Morality in Haiti: The Contest for Healing Power and a coeditor of Pain as Human Experience: Anthropological Perspectives. Theories of Contemporary Culture--Kathleen Woodward, general editor
Download or read book The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory written by Bryan S. Turner and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive new collection covering the principal traditions and critical contemporary issues of social theory. Builds on the success of The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, second edition with substantial revisions, entirely new contributions, and a fresh editorial direction Explores contemporary areas such as actor network theory, social constructionism, human rights and cosmopolitanism Includes chapters on demography, science and technology studies, and genetics and social theory Emphasizes key areas of sociology which have had an important impact in shaping the discipline as a whole
Download or read book Reconstructing biotechnologies written by Guido Ruivenkamp and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-28 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main subject of this publication is the co-creation of society and biotechnology. The authors do not treat society and biotechnology as separate domains, instead they consider technologies as socially constructed. The main focus of this publication is on agro-biotechnologies and the contributors present perspectives for reconstruction both from and in 'the North' and 'the South'. Reconstructing biotechnologies offers a range of critical social analyses confronting the actuality of biotechnology with the potentialities of its social reconstruction. In doing that, the book develops and merges literature from four different disciplines, namely (i) critical theory and its analyses of technology and power, (ii) political economy, critically assessing the interrelationship between economy, politics and technology, (iii) social constructivism, which holds that technology is the product of agency and knowledge systems, and (iv) the analysis of rural society and agrarian technologies in rural sociology. Reconstructing biotechnologies introduces exciting approaches and examples into the social reshaping of biotechnologies. It brings together critical examinations of contemporary biotechnology development and puts forward possible alternatives written by critical scholars. The contributions in this publication are for students and scholars in a wide range of disciplines such as social and political sciences, science and technology studies, and development studies. The editors of the book are associated with the Social Sciences Department of Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the Graduate School of Economics of Kyoto University in Japan. They have published extensively on social and political theory and biotechnology.
Download or read book Preparing for Life in Humanity 2 0 written by S. Fuller and published by Palgrave Pivot. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developing directly from Fuller's recent book Humanity 2.0, this is the first book to seriously consider what a 'post-' or 'trans'-' human state of being might mean for who we think we are, how we live, what we believe and what we aim to be.
Download or read book The Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology written by John de la Mothe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `Biotechnology' - the integrated use of biochemistry, microbiology, and chemical engineering for the technological application of the capabilities of microbes and cultured tissue cells - is quickly becoming pervasive and challenging, rapidly developing both new techniques and industries. The Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology - a joint project between Statistics Canada, the Program of Research on Innovation, Management and Economy (PRIME) at the University of Ottawa, and CIRANO at the University of Quebec in Montreal - brings together economic, social, and statistical views on the dynamics of this set of emerging technologies. It examines the costs as well as the benefits - the challenges as well as the choices - of the rapidly expanding science-based world of biodiversity, biopharmaceuticals, and bioinformatics, and it provides suggestions for future work and research. This project fits into an ongoing research program at Statistics Canada to develop meaningful indicators for science, technology, and innovation in a technology-intensive economy. This book tells the story of the inner workings of innovation systems, technological systems, and competence blocs in the production, use, and diffusion of knowledge.
Download or read book Human By Nature written by Peter Weingart and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Representing a wide range of disciplines -- biology, sociology, anthropology, economics, human ethology, psychology, primatology, history, and philosophy of science -- the contributors to this book recently spent a complete academic year at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) discussing a plethora of new insights in reference to human cultural evolution. These scholars acted as a living experiment of "interdisciplinarity in vivo." The assumption of this experiment was that the scholars -- while working and residing at the ZiF -- would be united intellectually as well as socially, a connection that might eventually enhance future interdisciplinary communication even after the research group had dispersed. An important consensus emerged: The issue of human culture poses a challenge to the division of the world into the realms of the "natural" and the "cultural" and hence, to the disciplinary division of scientific labor. The appropriate place for the study of human culture, in this group's view, is located between biology and the social sciences. Explicitly avoiding biological and sociological reductionisms, the group adopted a pluralistic perspective -- "integrative pluralism" -- that took into account both today's highly specialized and effective (sub-)disciplinary research and the possibility of integrating the respective findings on a case-by-case basis. Each sub-group discovered its own way of interdisciplinary collaboration and submitted a contribution to the present volume reflecting one of several types of fruitful cooperation, such as a fully integrated chapter, a multidisciplinary overview, or a discussion between different approaches. A promising first step on the long road to an interdisciplinarily informed understanding of human culture, this book will be of interest to social scientists and biologists alike.
Download or read book The Nature of Difference written by George Ellison and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-04-19 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unprecedented advances in genetics and biotechnology have brought profound new insights into human biological variation. These present challenges and opportunities for understanding the origins of human nature, the nature of difference, and the social practices these sustain. This provides an opportunity for cooperation between the biological and s
Download or read book The Risk Society and Beyond written by Barbara Adam and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2000-07-27 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arg
Download or read book The Posthuman Condition written by Kasper LippertRasmussen and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If biotechnology can be used to upgrade humans physically and mentally, should it be used at all? And, if so, to what extent? How will biotechnology affect societal cohesion? Can the development be controlled, or is this a Pandoras box that should remain closed? These are but a few of the perplex questions facing scientists as a result of the increasing ability of technology to change biology and, in turn, profoundly change human living conditions. This development has created a new posthuman horizon that will influence contemporary life and politics in a number of ways.The anthology brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines: biotechnology, medicine, ethics, politics, and aesthetics, and among contributors are Francis Fukuyama, Julian Savulescu, Maxwell Mehlman, John Harris and Chris Hables Gray.
Download or read book Our Posthuman Future written by Francis Fukuyama and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.
Download or read book Human Nature in an Age of Biotechnology written by Tamar Sharon and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-10-11 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human – or posthuman – to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects. The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches—two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each. Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault’s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working on ethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics.
Download or read book New Directions in Criminological Theory written by Steve Hall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection brings together established global scholars and new thinkers to outline fresh concepts and theoretical perspectives for criminological research and analysis in the 21st century. Criminologists from the UK, USA, Canada and Australia evaluate the current condition of criminological theory and present students and researchers with new and revised ideas from the realms of politics, culture and subjectivity to unpack crime and violence in the precarious age of global neoliberalism. These ideas range from the micro-realm of the ‘personality disorder’ to the macro-realm of global ‘power-crime’. Rejecting or modifying the orthodox notion that crime and harm are largely the products of criminalisation and control systems, these scholars bring causes and conditions back into play in an eclectic yet thematic way that should inspire students and researchers to once again investigate the reasons why some individuals and groups elect to harm others rather than seek sociability. This collection will inspire new criminologists to both look outside their discipline for new ideas to import, and to create new ideas within their discipline to reinvigorate it and further strengthen its ability to explain the crimes and harms that we see around us today. This book will be of particular interest to academics and both undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of criminology, especially to those looking for theoretical concepts and frameworks for dissertations, theses and research reports.
Download or read book Recoding Life written by Sakari Tamminen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the unprecedented convergence between the digital and the corporeal in the life sciences and turns to Foucault’s biopolitics in order to understand how life is being turned into a technological object. It examines a wide range of bioscientific knowledge practices that allow life to be known through codes that can be shared (copied), owned (claimed, and managed) and optimised (remade through codes based on standard language and biotech engineering visions). The book’s approach is captured in the title, which refers to 'the biopolitical'. The authors argue that through discussions of political theories of sovereignty and related geopolitical conceptions of nature and society, we can understand how crucially important it is that life is constantly unsettling and disrupting the established and familiar ordering of the material world and the related ways of thinking and acting politically. The biopolitical dynamics involved are conceptualised as the 'metacode of life', which refers to the shifting configurations of living materiality and the merging of conventional boundaries between the natural and artificial, the living and non-living. The result is a globalising world in which the need for an alternative has become a core part of its political and legal instability, and the authors identify a number of possible alternative platforms to understand life and the living as framed by the 'metacodes' of life. This book will appeal to scholars of science and technology studies, as well as scholars of the sociology, philosophy, and anthropology of science, who are seeking to understand social and technical heterogeneity as a characteristic of the life sciences.
