Social Theory and Human Biotechnology

Social Theory and Human Biotechnology PDF Author: Tim Owen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
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.

Social Theory and Human Biotechnology

Social Theory and Human Biotechnology PDF Author: Tim Owen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 222

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Biotechnology and Culture

Biotechnology and Culture PDF Author: Paul Brodwin
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253338310
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
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

Decentering Biotechnology

Decentering Biotechnology PDF Author: Michael S. Carolan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317154096
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
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.

New Evolutionary Social Science

New Evolutionary Social Science PDF Author: Heinz-Jurgen Niedenzu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317255488
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
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.

Criminological Theory

Criminological Theory PDF Author: T. Owen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137316950
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
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.

Reconstructing biotechnologies

Reconstructing biotechnologies PDF Author: Guido Ruivenkamp
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9086866395
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
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.

Preparing for Life in Humanity 2.0

Preparing for Life in Humanity 2.0 PDF Author: S. Fuller
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137277076
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
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.

The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory

The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory PDF Author: Bryan S. Turner
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119250749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 642

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Book Description
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

The Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology

The Economic and Social Dynamics of Biotechnology PDF Author: John de la Mothe
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461543231
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
`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.

The Risk Society and Beyond

The Risk Society and Beyond PDF Author: Barbara Adam
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1849202060
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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 arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck.