Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics
By Paul E. BrodwinBiotechnology 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.
Buy Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics at Attic books in Nairobi Kenya.
Book details
- Hardcover
- 296 pages
- English
- 025333831X
- 9780253338310
About Paul E. Brodwin
paul e. brodwin was Read More about Paul E. Brodwin
More Books By Paul E. Brodwin
People who bought this also bought
Finishing Strong : Going the Distance for your Family book by Steve Farrar
New Book
The Pilates Powerhouse : The Total Body Sculpting System for Losing Weight and Reshaping Your Body from Head to Toe
Used Book
Dining in the Kingdom of God: The Origins of Eucharist according to Luke
Used Book
The Power of Being a Woman : Embracing the Triumph of the Feminine Spirit
New Book
Toward the Setting Sun: Pioneer Girls Traveling the Overland Trails
Used Book
Food Rules: The Stuff You Munch, Its Crunch, Its Punch and Why You Someti: Stuff You Munch, Its Crunch, Its Punch, and Why You Sometimes Lose Your Lunch
Used Book
Spreading the Fire : New Look at Acts - God's Training Manual for Every Christian
Used Book
You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Five Principles for Keeping Life in Perspective
Used Book
3 Books in 1: Potluck/Weeknight Meals/Old-Fashioned Bake Sale Cookbook
Used Book