Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society

Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society PDF Author: Panagiotis Pentaris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000479560
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

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Book Description
Exploring both the intrapersonal (moral) and interpersonal (ethical) nature of death and dying in the context of their development (philosophical), Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society shows how death and dying have been and will continue to be governed in any given society. Drawing on transhumanism and discourses about posthumanity, life prolongation and digital life, the book analyses death, dying and grief via the governance of dying. It states that the bio-medical dimensions of our understanding of death and dying have predominated not only the discourses about death in society and the care of the dying, but their policy and practice as well. It seeks to provoke thinking beyond the benefits of technology and within the confinements of the world transhumanists describe. This book is written for all who have an interest in thanatology (i.e. death studies) but will be useful specifically to those investigating the experiences of dying and grieving in contemporary societies, wherein technology, biology and medicine continuously advance. Thus, the manuscript will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including health and social care, social policy, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and, of course, thanatology.

Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society

Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society PDF Author: Panagiotis Pentaris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000479560
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 127

Get Book Here

Book Description
Exploring both the intrapersonal (moral) and interpersonal (ethical) nature of death and dying in the context of their development (philosophical), Dying in a Transhumanist and Posthuman Society shows how death and dying have been and will continue to be governed in any given society. Drawing on transhumanism and discourses about posthumanity, life prolongation and digital life, the book analyses death, dying and grief via the governance of dying. It states that the bio-medical dimensions of our understanding of death and dying have predominated not only the discourses about death in society and the care of the dying, but their policy and practice as well. It seeks to provoke thinking beyond the benefits of technology and within the confinements of the world transhumanists describe. This book is written for all who have an interest in thanatology (i.e. death studies) but will be useful specifically to those investigating the experiences of dying and grieving in contemporary societies, wherein technology, biology and medicine continuously advance. Thus, the manuscript will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of areas including health and social care, social policy, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, cultural studies, and, of course, thanatology.

Posthuman Gaming

Posthuman Gaming PDF Author: Poppy Wilde
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000963071
Category : Games & Activities
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Posthuman Gaming: Avatars, Gamers, and Entangled Subjectivities explores the relationship between avatar and gamer in the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game World of Warcraft, to examine notions of entangled subjectivity, affects and embodiments – what it means and how it feels to be posthuman. With a focus on posthuman subjectivity, Wilde considers how we can begin to articulate ourselves when the boundary between self and other is unclear. Drawing on fieldnotes of her own gameplay experiences, the author analyses how subjectivity is formed in ways that defy a single individual notion of "self", and explores how different practices, feelings, and societal understandings can disrupt strict binaries and emphasise our posthumanism. She interrogates if one can speak of an "I" in the face of posthuman multiplicity, before exploring different analytical themes, beginning with how acting theories might be posthumanised and articulate the relationship between avatar and gamer. She then defines posthuman empathy and explains how this is experienced in gaming, before addressing the need to account for boredom, the complexity of nostalgia, and ways death and loss are experienced through gaming. This volume will appeal to a broad audience and is particularly relevant to scholars and students of cultural studies, media studies, humanities, and game studies. Chapters 2 and 7 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Culture, Spirituality and Religious Literacy in Healthcare

Culture, Spirituality and Religious Literacy in Healthcare PDF Author: Daniel Enstedt
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100096941X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Elaborating with the concepts of culture and religious literacy, this volume examines theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of the practice and study of religion and non-religion, culture, spirituality and worldviews within healthcare. In modern multi-cultural and multi-religious societies, a host of new issues have arisen concerning culture, religion and spirituality within healthcare, especially when people face serious and life-limiting illness. Healthcare professionals are faced with challenges addressing and handling patients’ cultural expressions of religiosity, spirituality and existential concerns. The variety needs to be met without essentializing the concepts of culture and religion, and with an ability to include the non-religious as well as new types of spiritualities. This collection reflects on the tension between cultural, religious and spiritual dimensions of care in a secularized healthcare institution and describes implications of this tension for healthcare professionals and patients. The book engages with an ongoing scholarly discussion about religious literacy in healthcare, and contributes perspectives, experiences and empirical examples from the Nordic countries, especially Sweden. It gives suggestions for practical application of research to healthcare practice, highlighting challenges and ideas for how to integrate religious, non-religious, and spiritual dimensions in care. This is an important contribution to the literature on religious literacy and provides a vital reference for students, scholars and healthcare professionals with an interest in the complex relationship between culture, spirituality, and religion in healthcare. Chapter 6 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

The Political Economy of Organ Transplantation

The Political Economy of Organ Transplantation PDF Author: Hagai Boas
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000643778
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
“This thought-provoking work examines how the relationships of organs, tissues, and cells transferred from one body to another through donation, sale, or gift are mediated by the state, market, and family. The book is a thorough review of the sociological, anthropological, and ethical literature surrounding transplant organs but encased within the author’s own personal dilemmas and lived experience. His work skillfully underscores the negotiations and accommodations inherent in the use of these technologies and reveals the situatedness of decisions that belie any simplistic readings of the ethics of transplantations... This is a stimulating and accessible book for those with an interest in transplantation, ethics, or the social implications of medical technologies. Its strength lies in the reflexive accounts from the author of his own experience juxtaposed with the sensitive appraisals of the workings of the state, market, and family in the organ economy.” Andrea Whittaker, Monash University, reviewed for Social Forces This innovative work combines a rigorous academic analysis of the political economy of organ supply for transplantation with autobiographical narratives that illuminate the complex experience of being an organ recipient. Organs for transplantations come from two sources: living or post-mortem organ donations. These sources set different routes of movement from one body to another. Postmortem organ donations are mainly sourced and allocated by state agencies, while living organ donations are the result of informal relations between donor and recipient. Each route traverses different social institutions, determines discrete interaction between donor and recipient, and is charged with moral meanings that can be competing and contrasting. The political economy of organs for transplants is the gamut of these routes and their interconnections, and this book suggests how such a political economy looks like: what are its features and contours, its negotiation of the roles of the state, market and the family in procuring organs for transplantations, and its ultimate moral justifications. Drawing on Boas’ personal experiences of waiting, searching and obtaining organs, each autobiographical section of the book sheds light on a different aspect of the discussed political economy of organs – post-mortem donations, parental donation, and organ market – and illustrates the experience of living with the fear of rejection and the intimidation of chronic shortage. A Political Economy of Organ Transplantation is of interest to students and academics with an interest in bioethics, sociology of health and illness, medical anthropology, and science and technology studies.

Techniques of Hearing

Techniques of Hearing PDF Author: Michael Schillmeier
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000736377
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Hearing, health, and technologies are entangled in multi-faceted ways. This edited volume addresses this complex relationship by arguing that modern hearing was and is increasingly linked to and mediated by technological innovations. By providing a set of original interdisciplinary investigations that shed new light on the history, theory, and practices of hearing techniques, it is able to explore the heterogeneous entanglements of sound, hearing practices, technologies, and health issues. As the first book to bring together historians, scholars from media studies, social sciences, cultural studies, acoustics, and neuroscientists, the volume discusses modern technologies and their decisive impact on how "normal" hearing, enhanced and smart hearing, as well as hearing impairment have been configured. It brings both new insights into the histories of hearing technologies as well as allowing us to better understand how enabling hearing technologies have currently been unfolding an increasingly hybrid ecology engaging smart hearing devices and offering stress-free hearing and acoustic well-being in novel auditory environments. The volume will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sound studies, sociology of health and illness, medical history, health and society, as well as those interested in the practices and techniques of self-monitored and smart hearing.

Digital Transformations in Care for Older People

Digital Transformations in Care for Older People PDF Author: Helena Hirvonen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000482782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
The book investigates digitalisation in care for older people by giving insight into service users’ and professionals’ opportunities to digital agency in the context of European welfare states. With a focus on service users and providers experiences of digital care, the contributions address the manifold and often contradictory consequences of active ageing policies and innovation programmes. To assess digital agency of older people, ageism and co-creation in the innovation processes as well the use of digital platforms are addressed, while care professionals’ digital agency is examined through empirical cases that focus on the interaction between human and non-human actors in long-term care services, the temporality and spatiality of care, and the organisational requirements for successful implementation of digital technologies. From a variety of conceptual and theoretical viewpoints, the chapters provide a comprehensive and timely overview of ways to address the phenomena of ageing and digitalisation. The book provides critical vantage points to academic readership, health and social care professionals, policymakers, other stakeholders as well as the general audience on the effects of digitalisation in care for older people. "The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. The Open Access fee was funded by University of Jyvaskyla, Finland."

The Regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Europe

The Regulation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Europe PDF Author: Erich Griessler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000583732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book explores the social, ethical and legal implications of assisted reproductive technologies (ART). Providing a comparative analysis of several European countries, the authors evaluate the varied approaches to the application of ART throughout Europe. From a global perspective, countries take very different approaches to the regulation of ART. Countries apply restrictions to the access criteria for these treatments and/or direct restrictions to the practice of the techniques themselves. To understand these varied approaches to ART practice and regulation, it is necessary to understand the societal and political background from which they emerged. This book therefore consists of case studies from eight European countries which provide insights into the status and development of the regulation of ART in the last 40 years. The country cases from all over Europe and the three comparative chapters provide insights into the diversity of current ART regulation across the continent as well as into similarities, differences and trends in this regulatory area. This book will be of interest to practitioners of ART who are interested in understanding the differences in regulation of ART in Europe, as well as long-term trends in this respect. Given the ethical and legal implications the book explores, it will also be of interest to students or researchers in the fields of social sciences, humanities and law.

Public Discourse and Health Policies

Public Discourse and Health Policies PDF Author: Nicoletta Bosco
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000505359
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
The questions addressed in the book revolve around the public nature of health as an asset and the rights associated with it, by drawing attention to sociology’s role in shedding light on current dynamics and understanding how they may change in the future. In the field of public health, significant empirical evidence points not only to the outcomes, clinical and otherwise, that extensive information can produce but also to the urgent need to rethink the far from straightforward relationship between having this information and the ability to put it to effective use in tackling the problems it relates to. The book is intended for a broad audience of university researchers and students, particularly those involved in upper-level sociology and social policy programs. It will also be of interest to healthcare and social work policy-makers and practitioners who wish to gain a more detailed grasp of the dynamics of healthcare in order to approach its processes critically and improve their outcomes.

Becoming with Care in Drug Treatment Services

Becoming with Care in Drug Treatment Services PDF Author: Lena Theodoropoulou
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000778975
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Employing Deleuzo–Guattarian orientations to assemblage and feminist approaches to care, this book offers a critique of neoliberal approaches to recovery from drugs and alcohol, while collapsing the dualities of harm reduction and recovery. This monograph empirically explores the practices of care emerging in two drug recovery services in Liverpool and Athens. Following the flows of the participants’ desires, it argues that it is not the lack of the substance that holds the recovery assemblage together, but the production of connections that enhance a body’s power of acting, constituting recovery a practice of collective care. The outcome of the analysis of the lived experiences of people in recovery is a call for the dismissal of policy as an intervention coming from outside, and its reconstitution as a practice produced inside the recovery assemblage. Focusing on the value of the assemblage as a viable methodological, ontological and epistemological orientation for critical drug studies, this volume contributes to the sociology of health and illness and will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Deleuzian Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology and Social Policy, Drugs and Addiction, Public Health and Medical Anthropology.

Cultures of Oral Health

Cultures of Oral Health PDF Author: Claire L. Jones
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000604357
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Oral health is integral to wellbeing and quality of life. This important edited volume brings together leading scholars to address global oral health and the multiple ways in which theory, practice and discourse have shaped it in the modern period. Structured around key themes, the book chapters draw on interdisciplinary perspectives in order to consider the role of the dental profession, the commercial sector, charities, the state, the media and patients in shaping oral health in the past and present. Collectively, the chapters consider the extent to which each of the studied groups and actors have sought to own and control the mouth. By adopting multiple perspectives, the book highlights the importance of cross-disciplinary work across the sciences, social sciences and humanities and provides a road map for a new interdisciplinary field focused on oral health and society. Drawing on perspectives from dentistry, sociology, history and the wider humanities, this book will interest students and researchers of dentistry, public health, sociology of health and illness, the medical humanities and history.