Born and made Franklin, Sarah; Franklin, Sarah; Roberts, Celia
2006., 20061030, 2006, 2007-01-01, 20060101
eBook
Are new reproductive and genetic technologies racing ahead of a society that is unable to establish limits to their use? Have the "new genetics" outpaced our ability to control their future ...applications? This book examines the case of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), the procedure used to prevent serious genetic disease by embryo selection, and the so-called "designer baby" method. Using detailed empirical evidence, the authors show that far from being a runaway technology, the regulation of PGD over the past fifteen years provides an example of precaution and restraint, as well as continual adaptation to changing social circumstances. Through interviews, media and policy analysis, and participant observation at two PGD centers in the United Kingdom,Born and Madeprovides an in-depth sociological examination of the competing moral obligations that define the experience of PGD.
Among the many novel findings of this pathbreaking ethnography of reproductive biomedicine is the prominence of uncertainty and ambivalence among PGD patients and professionals--a finding characteristic of the emerging "biosociety," in which scientific progress is inherently paradoxical and contradictory. In contrast to much of the speculative futurology that defines this field,Born and Madeprovides a timely and revealing case study of the on-the-ground decision-making that shapes technological assistance to human heredity.
This companion explores ANT as an intellectual practice, tracking its movements and engagements with a wide range of other academic and activist projects. Showcasing the work of a diverse set of ...‘second generation’ ANT scholars from around the world, it highlights the exciting depth and breadth of contemporary ANT and its future possibilities.The companion has 38 chapters, each answering a key question about ANT and its capacities. Early chapters explore ANT as an intellectual practice and highlight ANT’s dialogues with other fields and key theorists. Others open critical, provocative discussions of its limitations. Later sections explore how ANT has been developed in a range of social scientific fields and how it has been used to explore a wide range of scales and sites. Chapters in the final section discuss ANT’s involvement in ‘real world’ endeavours such as disability and environmental activism, and even running a Chilean hospital. Each chapter contains an overview of relevant work and introduces original examples and ideas from the authors’ recent research. The chapters orient readers in rich, complex fields and can be read in any order or combination. Throughout the volume, authors mobilise ANT to explore and account for a range of exciting case studies: from wheelchair activism to parliamentary decision-making; from racial profiling to energy consumption monitoring; from queer sex to Korean cities. A comprehensive introduction by the editors explores the significance of ANT more broadly and provides an overview of the volume.The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory will be an inspiring and lively companion to academics and advanced undergraduates and postgraduates from across many disciplines across the social sciences, including Sociology, Geography, Politics and Urban Studies, Environmental Studies and STS, and anyone wishing to engage with ANT, to understand what it has already been used to do and to imagine what it might do in the future.
This collection provides an account of the ways language addresses core questions concerning power and the place of migrants in various institutional and workplace settings. It brings together ...contributions from a range of geographical settings to understand better how linguistic inequality is (re)produced in this new economic order.
This survey article looks first at the changing demands of the workplace in a globalized economy. The new work order creates a new word order, and the workforce has become a “wordforce” (Heller, in ...press) with new genres of language and communication. These changes have taken place at a time when global flows of people, from less wealthy and secure societies to more wealthy and secure ones, have created multilingual workplaces. Both sets of changes challenge the traditional notion of second language socialization, and this is the focus of the next section. The workplace represents a complex, dynamic setting where migrants experience a double socialization: into the hybrid discourses of the workplace, which all newcomers experience, and into the specific language and cultural practices that realize these discourses. The new language requirements of the workplace produce for migrant workers and professionals a “linguistic penalty” (Roberts & Campbell, 2006) since the communicative demands of the selection process may be greater than those of the job itself. The last section of the article is concerned with language socialization in multilingual settings where language socialization into the dominant language is only part of the story. There is a contrast between the low status multilingualism of migrant workers, and staff in globalized and international organizations who are being socialized into new lingua franca interaction. The article concludes with an example of how the complex linguistic and technical environment of a high-tech multilingual company produces radically different conditions for language socialization which challenge how this notion can be used in the 21st century.
Puberty has long been recognised as a difficult and upsetting process for individuals and families, but it is now also being widely described as in crisis. Reportedly occurring earlier and earlier as ...each decade of the twenty-first century passes, sexual development now heralds new forms of temporal trouble in which sexuality, sex/gender and reproduction are all at stake. Many believe that children are growing up too fast and becoming sexual too early. Clinicians, parents and teachers all demand something must be done. Does this out-of-time development indicate that children's futures are at risk or that we are entering a new era of environmental and social perturbation? Engaging with a diverse range of contemporary feminist and social theories on the body, biology and sex, Celia Roberts urges us to refuse a discourse of crisis and to rethink puberty as a combination of biological, psychological and social forces.
Globally, increasing numbers of children are thought to be going through early onset puberty. This much debated fact leads to significant concerns about young people’s sexualities, as early ...developers are thought to be more likely to engage in early sexual activity. Underpinning historical, national and subpopulation (including ‘racial’) comparisons is a standard measurement tool: the Tanner Scale of sexual development. The scale is based on James M. Tanner and R.H. Whitehouse’s ground-breaking longitudinal study of children’s growth undertaken in London between 1949 and 1971. This article explores the largely over-looked and under-theorized significance of the scale’s history, arguing that the study’s focus on children living in an English care institution and its material practices of documenting their growth, including photography, has important ethical and scientific implications for understanding sexual development as a bio-psycho-social process.
In 2008, Timmermans and Haas called for a ‘sociology of disease’ to develop and challenge the sociology of health and illness. A sociology of disease, they argued, would take seriously the biological ...and physiological processes of disease in theorising health and illness. Building on two decades of Science and Technology Studies and feminist work on biological actors such as hormones and genes, we propose a ‘cortisol sociology’ to push further at this argument. As a ‘messenger of stress’, cortisol is key to understanding human and non‐human health as a biosocial phenomenon. We argue that sociologists should engage with cortisol through critical yet open‐minded reading of the relevant science and critical triangulation studies, and by tracking cortisol’s movements from science into public worlds of biosensing and self‐monitoring.
This article explores material from a citizen's inquiry into the social and ethical implications of health biosensors. In 'Our Bodies, Our Data' a space was afforded for members of the public to ...examine two forms of health biosensing, and for the authors to research what happens when such examination shifts from the domain of experts to that of citizens. Drawing on data from this inquiry, which form part of a wider research project, 'Living Data: making sense of health biosensors', we open up conceptual and methodological questions about how to study innovative health technologies and contribute to debates about the direction of health biosensing by bringing forward the views of a group rarely heard in this domain: the public. The panel of 15 participants was shown examples, handled devices and heard evidence about the development of home ovulation monitoring and direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Citizens identified key areas of concern around the development, design and marketing of these devices, implicating technology companies, public bodies and civil society organisations. The panel articulated serious concerns relating to ethics, trust, accountability, quality and governance of health biosensors that operate 'outside the clinic'. Their deliberations reflect concern for what kind of society is being made when genetic testing and home reproductive technologies are promoted and sold directly to the public. The panel process allowed us to re-imagine biosensors, wresting their narratives from the individualising discourses of self-optimisation and responsibilisation which have dominated their introduction in Euro-US markets.
Abstract
In 2019/2020, multiple bushfires burned across south-east Australia converging into unprecedented megafires that burned 5.8 million hectares. From October 2019–February 2020, 80% of ...Australians were affected by smoke from these fires, exposing them to dramatic increases of PM
2.5
in the air at an average level of ∼70
μ
g m3 per day, well above the World Health Organisation recommendation of ∼10
μ
g m3. Maternal exposure to PM
2.5
has been associated with negative birth outcomes and an increased rate of birth defects, yet there is a dearth of literature regarding how pregnant women deal with exposure to bushfire smoke. The aim of this study was thus to investigate how pregnant and postpartum women experienced severe bushfire smoke associated with the 2019–2020 bushfires in south-east Australia and the strategies they used to mitigate exposure to smoke for themselves and their unborn or newborn children. Forty-three women who were exposed to fire and/or smoke from the 2019–2020 bushfires participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews via phone or videoconference. These women were selected purposively from a larger group of women who had elected to be interviewed. After interview, data were transcribed and thematically analysed using the four phases of disaster response (prevention, preparedness, response, recovery) as a frame. Overall, our results indicated that public health advice failed to meet the unique needs of this group. While many protected their properties appropriately and were reasonably well prepared for evacuation, they were unprepared for the disruption to vital services including power and communications. Women exposed to smoke inundation were unprepared for this outcome and self-initiated a variety of strategies. The support of community was also key to recovery. There is a clear need for specific recognition of the needs of pregnant women across all phases of disaster response, incorporating public health messaging, peer support, and access to resources.
This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to talk and its role in creating workplace practice and relationships. Analytic tools drawn from ethnography, conversation analysis, interactional ...sociolinguistics and discourse analysis illuminate a range of workplace discourses. The book is a key text for graduate students as well as for lecturers and and researchers across a range of disciplines: sociolinguistics, sociology, culture and communication studies, applied linguistics.
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