Download or read book Transhumanisms and Biotechnologies in Consumer Society written by Jennifer Takhar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-11-28 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transhumanisms and Biotechnologies in Consumer Society offers new, critical perspectives on the impact of 'life-enhancing' technological advancements on consumer identity positions and market evolutions. Technoprogressive innovations that include body modification technologies and reproductive technologies have enabled people to transcend bodily constraints. In parallel, they provoke necessary, critical interrogation around human capabilities, technological possibilities, gender equality, feminism, personal identity, bioethics, markets and morality. The contributions in this book re-evaluate these topics and elucidate some of the vexed relationships between consumers of biotechnologies and markets they consider restrictive or misleading. Secondly, by illustrating consumers’ questioning of and resistance to biomedical, market imperatives, they highlight how the notion of consumer sovereignty, consumer influence over markets, has now advanced into novel forms of consumer activism made manifest through contemporary health justice movements. The chapters in this book also uncover profoundly personal consumer accounts on coping with and managing bodies-in-transition, focusing on illness, self-perception, survivorship and the vicissitudes of these corporeal experiences. This book will allow readers to understand how accelerated technological market changes are being experienced and creatively countered at the societal and individual level. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Marketing Management.

Download or read book Transhumanism and Society written by Stephen Lilley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-07-31 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an introductory overview to the social debate over enhancement technologies with an overview of the transhumanists' call to bypass human nature and conservationists' argument in defense of it. The author present this controversy as it unfolds in the contest between transhumanists proponents and conservationists, who push back with an argument to conserve human nature and to ban enhancement technologies. This book provides an overview of the key contested points and present the debate in an orderly, constructive fashion. Readers are informed about the discussion over humanism, the tension between science and religion, and the interpretation of socio-technological revolutions; and are invited to make up their own mind about one of the most challenging topics concerning the social and ethical implications of technological advancements.

Download or read book H written by Gregory R. Hansell and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Proactionary Imperative written by S. Fuller and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Proactionary Imperative debates the concept of transforming human nature, including such thorny topics as humanity's privilege as a species, our capacity to 'play God', the idea that we might treat our genes as a capital investment, eugenics and what it might mean to be 'human' in the context of risky scientific and technological interventions.

Download or read book Transhumanism Entering an Era of Bodyhacking and Radical Human Modification written by Emma Tumilty and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-09-29 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book surveys the distinctions that underlie the unbound potential and existential risks of life expansion and radical modifications posed by a transhuman world. Humanness is in flux as human bodies are being hacked and altered in their quest for super wellness, super intelligence and super longevity. Now is the time to discuss how best to think about dealing with bodies that have been hacked to exceed natural physical limits or more technically, species typical functioning. Enter the advent of transhumanism to take uncertainty by the horns. According to transhumanists, death is unnecessary and medical conventions undermine the possibility to radically evolve. To biohackers, there is no need to wait to explore the risks that conventional medicine dares not. This book is of interest to anyone interested in tapping into this growing movement of modifying the human body as it is right now.

Download or read book Transhumanism and Posthumanism in the Perspective of Biotechnologies written by Veda and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2023-10-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book analyses the ideas of transhumanism and posthumanism from several philosophical perspectives and how they overlap with artistic expression. It explores the possible ontological, ethical, and social implications associated with the fulfilment of this vision. It analyses their influence on literary, visual, cinematic, and digital art.

Download or read book Transhumanism written by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and published by Penn State University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transhumanism is widely misunderstood, in part because the media has exaggerated current technologies and branded the movement as dangerous, leading many to believe that hybrid humans may soon walk among us and that immortality, achieved by means of mind-uploading, is imminent. In this essential and clarifying volume, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner debunks widespread myths about transhumanism and tackles head-on the most pressing ethical issues in the debate over technologically assisted human enhancement. On Transhumanism is a vital primer on the subject, written by a world-renowned expert. In this book, Sorgner presents an overview of the movement's history, capably summarizing the twelve pillars of transhumanist discourse and explaining the great diversity of transhumanist responses to each individual topic. He highlights the urgent ethical challenges related to the latest technological developments, inventions, and innovations and compares the unique cultural standing of transhumanism to other cultural movements, placing it within the broader context of the Enlightenment, modernity, postmodernity, and the philosophical writings of Nietzsche. Engagingly written and translated and featuring an introduction for North American readers, this comprehensive overview of the cultural and philosophical movement of transhumanism will be required reading for students of post-humanist philosophy and for general audiences interested in learning about the transhumanist movement.

Download or read book Transhumanism The Proper Guide to a Posthuman Condition or a Dangerous Idea written by Wolfgang Hofkirchner and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the contributions of the transhumanism approach to technology, in particular the contributed chapters are wary of the implications of this popular idea. The volume is organized into four parts concerning philosophical, military, technological and sociological aspects of transhumanism, but the reader is free to choose various reading patterns. Topics discussed include gene editing, the singularity, ethical machines, metaphors in AI, mind uploading, and the philosophy of art, and some perspectives taken or discussed examine transhumanism within the context of the philosophy of technology, transhumanism as a derailed anthropology, and critical sociological aspects that consider transhumanism in the context of topical concerns such as whiteness, maleness, and masculinity. The book will be of value to researchers engaged with artificial intelligence, and the ethical, societal, and philosophical impacts of science and technology.

Download or read book Celebrity Convergence and Transformation written by Douglas Brownlie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together the latest thinking on both celebrity brands and celebrity culture from academics specialising in the field of marketing, this book explores a range of insightful contexts in order to add vigour and vitality to our understanding of the connections between celebrities, markets and culture. It unpacks the identity theoretics which have their origins in the turn to celebrity culture and the spectacle and glamour of mass-media practices. In doing so, the contributors hint at new forms of individuation where the line between the virtual and the actual is blurred, and where images of celebrities construct and deconstruct themselves. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Download or read book Posthuman Management written by Matthew E. Gladden and published by Defragmenter Media. This book was released on 2016-08-07 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.

Download or read book Healthcare Activism written by Susi Geiger and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of activists and civil society in defining and defending the collective good in healthcare, especially in cases where that good seems to be heavily shaped by market dynamics? Presenting conceptual and empirical studies from a variety of healthcare contexts and theoretical perspectives, this book addresses this vital question by drawing together multidisciplinary scholarship from Science and Technology Studies, Sociology, Organisation Studies, Marketing, Philosophy, and Public Health. Healthcare has undergone three major changes over the past decades: the advent of personalized medicine, the marketization of public care systems, and the digitalization of healthcare services. This book maps these changes and illustrates the extent to which they are interlinked to produce a seemingly unstoppable move toward individualization in healthcare. The book also highlights the tensions and challenges arising from these interlinkages, and traces how activists react to these tensions to argue for and defend the common good. It thus sketches a multifaceted picture of healthcare activism in the 21st century as civil society responds to these dynamics at the crossroads of markets and morals, economic and social justifications, individual and collective, and digital and non-digital worlds. Crucially, it also highlights potential solutions for heightening patient voices and broadening participation in healthcare markets in a post Covid-19 world.

Download or read book Pleasure Consuming Medicine written by Kane Race and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a summer night in 2007, the Azure Party, part of Sydney’s annual gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, is underway. Alongside the party outfits, drugs, lights, and DJs is a volunteer care team trained to deal with the drug-related emergencies that occasionally occur. But when police appear at the gates with drug-detecting dogs, mild panic ensues. Some patrons down all their drugs, heightening their risk of overdose. Others try their luck at the gates. After twenty-six attendees are arrested with small quantities of illicit substances, the party is shut down and the remaining partygoers disperse into the city streets. For Kane Race, the Azure Party drug search is emblematic of a broader technology of power that converges on embodiment, consumption, and pleasure in the name of health. In Pleasure Consuming Medicine, he illuminates the symbolic role that the illicit drug user fulfills for the neoliberal state. As he demonstrates, the state’s performance of moral sovereignty around substances designated “illicit” bears little relation to the actual dangers of drug consumption; in fact, it exacerbates those dangers. Race does not suggest that drug use is risk-free, good, or bad, but rather that the regulation of drugs has become a site where ideological lessons about the propriety of consumption are propounded. He argues that official discourses about drug use conjure a space where the neoliberal state can be seen to be policing the “excesses” of the amoral market. He explores this normative investment in drug regimes and some “counterpublic health” measures that have emerged in response. These measures, which Race finds in certain pragmatic gay men’s health and HIV prevention practices, are not cloaked in moralistic language, and they do not cast health as antithetical to pleasure.

Download or read book Consumer Culture Theory written by Eric J. Arnould and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2018-06-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outlining the key themes, concepts and theoretical areas in the field, this book draws on contributions from prominent researchers to unravel the complexities of consumer culture by looking at how it affects personal identity, social interactions and the consuming human being. A field which is characterised as being theoretically challenging is made accessible through learning features that include case study material, critical reflection, research directions, further reading and a broad mix of the types of consumers and consumption contexts including emerging markets and economies. The structure of the book is designed to help students map the field in the way it is interpreted by researchers and follows the conceptual mapping in the classic Arnould & Thompson 2005 journal article. The book is organised into three parts - the Consumption Identity, Marketplace Cultures and the Socio-Historic Patterning of Consumption. Insight is offered into both the historical roots of consumer culture and the everyday experiences of navigating the contemporary marketplace. The book is supported by a collection of international case studies and real world scenarios, including: How Fashion Bloggers Rule the Fashion World; the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial; Professional Beer Pong, Military Recruiting Campaigns, The World Health Organization and the Corporatization of Education. The go-to text for anyone new to CCT or postgraduate students writing a CCT-related thesis.

Download or read book Intelligent Robotics and Applications written by Xin-Jun Liu and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 4-volume set LNAI 13013 - 13016 constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications, ICIRA 2021, which took place in Yantai, China, during October 22-25, 2021. The 299 papers included in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 386 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Robotics dexterous manipulation; sensors, actuators, and controllers for soft and hybrid robots; cable-driven parallel robot; human-centered wearable robotics; hybrid system modeling and human-machine interface; robot manipulation skills learning; micro_nano materials, devices, and systems for biomedical applications; actuating, sensing, control, and instrumentation for ultra-precision engineering; human-robot collaboration; robotic machining; medical robot; machine intelligence for human motion analytics; human-robot interaction for service robots; novel mechanisms, robots and applications; space robot and on-orbit service; neural learning enhanced motion planning and control for human robot interaction; medical engineering.

Download or read book Gendering Theory in Marketing and Consumer Research written by Zeynep Arsel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-03 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gendering Theory in Marketing and Consumer Research showcases state-of-the-art scholarship on gender in the field of marketing and consumer research. The book presents seven original contributions by a group of internationally renowned academics, who take up the task of theorising gender and gendering theory in new ways, accommodating recent intersectional, material-discursive, and practice-oriented theorisations. Connecting the study of marketing and consumer behaviour to different theoretical perspectives on gender, the contributors explore and critically examine the gendered nature and dimensions of contemporary marketplace activity. Through innovative conceptual development and insightful empirical analyses, the book offers important scholarly contributions to the literature on gender, marketing, and consumer research, and advances our understanding of gender as lived experience and socially regulated performance. It also frequently employ an intersectionalist perspective, theorising gender as only a part of one’s subject position, which is constituted by mutually reinforcing categories. The book will be essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners who are interested in the implications and contemporary manifestations of gender as a cultural category in the marketplace. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Download or read book Marketing Performativity written by Katy Mason and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-11 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marketing Performativity: Theories, practices and devices addresses concerns about the theory-practice gap so often discussed by marketing scholars, and indeed reframes this ‘gap’ by asking ‘how is marketing theory performative?’ How does marketing theory shape action? Who uses it in practice and to what effects? The individual contributions in this book look at how marketing theories are used in practice and what this means for our understanding of the practicing–theorising landscape of marketing. The book begins by considering what performativity is and how this concept is used in the marketing literature. It then considers three themes concerning the performativity of marketing that emerge from the contributions, before presenting ten empirical studies that ask how, why, and to what effect marketing theories are used and ‘performed’ in marketing practice. The book also summarises the implications of three themes and sketches research areas for further developing our understanding of the performativity of marketing. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Download or read book Decolonizing Sociology written by Ali Meghji and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-01-07 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sociology, as a discipline, was born at the height of global colonialism and imperialism. Over a century later, it is yet to shake off its commitment to colonial ways of thinking. This book explores why, and how, sociology needs to be decolonized. It analyses how sociology was integral in reproducing the colonial order, as dominant sociologists constructed theories either assuming or proving the supposed barbarity and backwardness of colonized people. Ali Meghji reveals how colonialism continues to shape the discipline today, dominating both social theory and the practice of sociology, how exporting the Eurocentric sociological canon erased social theories from the Global South, and how sociologists continue to ignore the relevance of coloniality in their work. This guide will be necessary reading for any student or proponent of sociology. In opening up the work of other decolonial advocates and under-represented thinkers to readers, Meghji offers key suggestions for what teachers and students can do to decolonize sociology. With curriculum reform, innovative teaching and a critical awareness of these issues, it is possible to make sociology more equitable on a global scale.