Law's article begins by restating the classical ANT position that objects do not exist `in themselves' but are the effect of a performative stabilization of relational networks. In addition, these material enactments inevitably have a spatial dimension; they simultaneously establish spatial conditions for objectual identity, continuity, and difference. Space must not be reified as a natural, pre-existing container of the social and the material, but is itself a performance. Moreover, there are multiple forms of spatiality beyond the Euclidean space of (...) regions, and objects may exist and achieve homeomorphism within several different spatial systems. Technologies such as the Zimbabwe Bush Pump present a fluid object which is able to exist and cohere without the presence of fixed boundaries or the permanence of a particular functional definition. The network logic, however, which gravitates towards stability and functionality, tends to exclude and silence this spatial Other. An alternative political ontology is needed which goes beyond the reification of network space in order to give voice to the fluid objects which escape its unidimensional functionality. (shrink)

Although much recent social science and humanities work has been a revolt against simplification, this volume explores the contrast between simplicity and complexity to reveal that this dichotomy, itself, is too simplistic. John Law and Annemarie Mol have gathered a distinguished panel of contributors to offer—particularly within the field of science studies—approaches to a theory of complexity, and at the same time a theoretical introduction to the topic. Indeed, they examine not only ways of relating to complexity but complexity _in (...) practice._ Individual essays study complexity from a variety of perspectives, addressing market behavior, medical interventions, aeronautical design, the governing of supranational states, ecology, roadbuilding, meteorology, the science of complexity itself, and the psychology of childhood trauma. Other topics include complex wholes in the sciences, moral complexity in seemingly amoral endeavors, and issues relating to the protection of African elephants. With a focus on such concepts as multiplicity, partial connections, and ebbs and flows, the collection includes narratives from Kenya, Great Britain, Papua New Guinea, the Netherlands, France, and the meetings of the European Commission, written by anthropologists, economists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, and scholars of science, technology, and society. _Contributors._ Andrew Barry, Steven D. Brown, Michel Callon, Chunglin Kwa, John Law, Nick Lee, Annemarie Mol, Marilyn Strathern, Laurent Thévenot, Charis Thompson. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn this we explore some of the ways in which a state scientific laboratory (Daresbury SERC) reacted to the rtetoric and forces of the marketpace in the 1980s. We describe laboratory attempts to create what we call “good customers” while converting itself into a “good seller” by developing a particulat set of costing practicting that were closely related to the implementation of a management accounting system. Finally, we consider how Daresbury response to “market forces” influenced scintific and organzational practice, (...) and arsponse that the social technologies of governmentality performed by accountancy — but also by scientific and bureaucratic practice are complex, discursively heterogeneou, and used in context-sensitive ways. This means, or so we suggest, that it is difficult to mount general argunents about “science” and “the market,” and that the use of such large-scale institions impedes impedes analysis. (shrink)

Women are drastically underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and this underrepresentation has been linked to gender stereotypes and ability related beliefs. One way to remedy this may be to challenge male bias gender stereotypes around STEM by cultivating equitable beliefs that both female and male can excel in STEM. The present study implemented a growth mindset intervention to promote children’s incremental ability beliefs and investigate the relation between the intervention and children’s gender stereotypes in an informal science (...) learning site. Participants were visitors to a science museum who took part in an interactive space science show. Participants who were exposed to a growth mindset intervention, compared to the participants in the control condition, reported significantly less gender stereotyping around STEM by reporting equitably in the stereotype awareness measure. Relatedly, participants in the control condition reported male bias gender stereotype in the stereotype awareness measure. Further, children between 5 and 8-years-old reported greater male bias stereotypes awareness and stereotype flexibility in space science compared to children between 9 and 12-years-old. Lastly, children demonstrated in-group bias in STEM ability. Male participants reported gender bias favoring males’ ability in stereotype flexibility and awareness measures, while female participants reported bias toward females’ ability in stereotype flexibility and awareness measures. These findings document the importance of a growth mindset intervention in buffering against STEM gender stereotyping amongst children, as well as the significant role a growth mindset intervention can play within an informal science learning site. (shrink)

Who is the 'I' that performs? The arts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have pushed us relentlessly to reconsider our notions of the self, expression, and communication: to ask ourselves, again and again, who we think we are and how we can speak meaningfully to one another. Although in other performing arts studies, especially of theatre, the performance of selfhood and identity continues to be a matter of lively debate in both practice and theory, the question of how a (...) sense of self is manifested through musical performance has been neglected. The authors of 'Voices, Bodies, Practices' are all musician-researchers: the book employs artistic research to explore how embodied performing "voices" can emerge from the interactions of individual performers and composers, musical materials, instruments, mediating technologies, and performance contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores a colonial controversy: the imposition of state rules to limit salmon fishing in a Scandinavian subarctic river. These rules reflect biological fish population models intended to preserve salmon populations, but this river has also been fished for centuries by indigenous Sámi people who have their own different practices and knowledges of the river and salmon. In theory, the Norwegian state recognizes traditional ecological knowledge and includes this in its biological assessments, but in practice this does not happen, (...) so Sámi fishing practices and the realities that they enact are disappearing. This paper explores how to conceptualize colonial differences in knowing. Drawing on recent anthropology, it asks how “settler” and “nomadic” enact worlds and their realities, suggesting that, unlike the latter, the former create a single reality intolerant of alternatives. The focus is thus on a “politics of how” and the ways in which colonial realities and knowledges might intersect less destructively. (shrink)

In this contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium “Fuzzy Studies,” the authors, all of whom work in the field of science, technology, and society, begin from the assumption that, as Bruno Latour has put it, “we have never been modern.” They accept the STS thesis that, while modern practices purport to be entirely rational and coherent, on closer inspection they turn out to be as much noncoherent as coherent. This article poses the question of what forms “noncoherences” take and (...) how they are managed. The basic argument is that there is a range of styles of noncoherence or “modes of syncretism.” In small case studies, the authors identify six such modes or styles, which they term denial, domestication, separation, care, conflict, and collapse. Given that consistency and coherence seem less important now than they were once taken to be — and given that the conditions of possibility for purity are, in any case, in decline — this list and its supporting case studies, while not meant to be definitive, are offered as a way of understanding how practices that do not cohere may still function and fit together admirably. (shrink)

This article asks how contexts are made in science as well as in social science, and how the making of contexts relates to political agency and intervention. To explore these issues, it traces contexting for foot-and-mouth disease and the strategies used to control the epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001. It argues that to depict the world is to assemble contexts and to hold them together in a mode that may be descriptive, explanatory, or predictive. In developing this argument, (...) it explores how contexts are assembled in a series of different descriptive and explanatory narratives in epidemiology, policy, critical social science, and social studies of science. (shrink)

The author argues economic analysis needs to be explicitly included in an overall theory of law and technology. Differing approaches to the economics of information are considered, and the copyright policy environment of the 1990s is taken as an example of how the lack of substantive economic analysis resulted in poor policy-making.

How one thinks about the relationship between individual autonomy (sometimes referred to as individual willpower or human agency) and technology can influence the way legal thinkers develop policy at the intersection of law and technology. Perspectives that fall toward the `machines control us' end of the spectrum may support more interventionist legal policies while those who identify more closely with the `we are in charge of machines' position may refuse to interfere with technological developments. The concept of soft (...) determinism charts a middle-ground between these two positions and could assist in the formulation of a general theory of the relationship between law and technology. Soft determinism maintains that technological developments are embedded in social, political, economic and other processes, and serve to guide and, potentially, configure future actions and relationships with these technologies, their users, and their subjects: while past technology develops shape the present, individuals and groups can still exert control over these technological developments. (shrink)

Considering the relationship between human autonomy, law and technology has deep origins. Both technology studies and legal theory tell origin stories about human autonomy as the prize from either a foundational technological or jurisprudential event. In these narratives either law is considered a second order consequence of technology or technology is revealed as a second order consequence of law. In the alternative what is suggested is a foundation story drawing upon human autonomy as human responsibility for (...) law and technology and for the stories told about them. (shrink)

This short note considers the relationships between human autonomy, both individual and collective, and technology. At the collective level, numerous writers have observed the profound effects on society of technological discoveries — leading to the suggestion that societal mechanisms through which we might seek to make deliberate choices about technologies are ineffective. One such mechanism is the law, and I suggest through various examples that legal doctrines and judicial processes may indeed be limited in their ability to regulate (...) class='Hi'>technology. At the individual level, technologies have profound effects on human autonomy, both making certain choices possible but also changing the material and cultural environment in ways that make the adoption of technologies inescapable in a way that appears to erode human autonomy. (shrink)

The reign of paper files would seem to be over once files are reduced to the status of icons on computer screens, but Vismann's book, which examines the impact of the file on Western institutions throughout history, shows how the creation of order in medieval and early modern administrations makes its returns in computer architecture.

The dynamic development of science and technology in the last decades has led to new challenges in jurisprudence. This holds for individual fields of doctrinal law as well as the concerned fields of jurisprudence. It is especially significant for the structure of justice, the efficiency of law as a steering instrument of society, and the empirical conditions of legal responsibility. In a jurisprudential perspective, the philosophy of law is rather engaged with the adaptiveness of its traditional principles and categories (...) or the capacity to come to terms with the new developments and less concerned with concrete matters of law. (shrink)

Introduction -- Rational anthropology and the difference between persons and animals -- Human freedom and conscience -- The three moral determinants and doubts of conscience -- The principle of double effect and consequentialism -- Cooperation and scandal -- Virtues--natural and supernatural -- Sin and grace -- Revelation -- Reproductive technologies -- Homosexuality and same-sex marriage -- Contraception -- Abortion -- Marriage and family -- End of life issues -- Appendix A : Summary of Evangelium Vitae -- Appendix B : Summary (...) of Savifici Doloris. (shrink)

How can law ethically regulate a future of fast-changing technologies? From recent inventions to science fiction, Future Law explores how law, ethics and regulation must respond to new technologies that challenge the boundaries of our ethics.

_Quod non est in actis, non est in mundo_. Once files are reduced to the status of stylized icons on computer screens, the reign of paper files appears to be over. With the epoch of files coming to an end, we are free to examine its fundamental influence on Western institutions. From a media-theoretical point of view, subject, state, and law reveal themselves to be effects of specific record-keeping and filing practices. Files are not simply administrative tools; they mediate and (...) process legal systems. The genealogy of the law described in Vismann's _Files_ ranges from the work of the Roman magistrates to the concern over one's own file, as expressed in the context of the files kept by the East German State Security. The book concludes with a look at the computer architecture in which all the stacks, files, and registers that had already created order in medieval and early modern administrations make their reappearance. (shrink)

This timely book tells the story of the smart technologies that reconstruct our world, by provoking their most salient functionality: the prediction and preemption of our day-to-day activities, preferences, health and credit risks, criminal intent and spending capacity. Mireille Hildebrandt claims that we are in transit between an information society and a data-driven society, which has far reaching consequences for the world we depend on. She highlights how the pervasive employment of machine-learning technologies that inform so-called ‘data-driven agency’ threaten privacy, (...) identity, autonomy, non-discrimination, due process and the presumption of innocence. The author argues how smart technologies undermine, reconfigure and overrule the ends of the law in a constitutional democracy, jeopardizing law as an instrument of justice, legal certainty and the public good. Finally, the book calls on lawyers, computer scientists and civil society not to reject smart technologies, explaining how further engaging these technologies may help to reinvent the effective protection of the rule of law. (shrink)

Law and technology , though not equivalent, are intertwined at every phase of a technology's "career." Any technology is directly or indirectly social, and as such becomes a target of regulation intrinsically or in relation to other technologies which it supports or opposes. Competing interests influence major decisions as to which technologies are encouraged or discouraged, heavily regulated or not, banned or not. Examples considered range from bounties to fuel, communication, and transportation preferences.

Embryo litigation -- Access to ART treatment : insurance and discrimination -- General professional liability litigation -- Paternity and donor insemination -- Maternity and egg donation -- Traditional and gestational surrogacy arrangements -- Posthumous reproduction : access and parentage -- Same-sex parentage and ART -- Genetics (PGD) and ART -- ART-related embryonic stem cell legal developments -- ART-related adoption litigation -- ART-related fetal litigation and abortion-related litigation.

Emerging technologies present a challenging but fascinating set of ethical, legal and regulatory issues. The articles selected for this volume provide a broad overview of the most influential historical and current thinking in this area and show that existing frameworks are often inadequate to address new technologies - such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, synthetic biology and robotics - and innovative new models are needed. This collection brings together invaluable, innovative and often complementary approaches for overcoming the unique challenges of emerging (...) class='Hi'>technology ethics and governance. (shrink)

I discuss three tiers of technological innovation: mild innovation, or the acceleration by technology of a human activity aimed at a good; moderate innovation, or the obviation by technology of an activity aimed at a good; and radical innovation, or the altering by technology of the human condition so as to change what counts as a good. I argue that it is impossible to morally assess proposed innovations within any of these three tiers unless we rehabilitate a (...) natural-law ethical framework. And I offer some moral starting points within such a framework, in connection with innovations of each of the three types. (shrink)

As we become more and more enhanced with cyborg technology, significant issues of law and policy are raised. For example, as cyborg devices implanted within the body create a class of people with enhanced motor and computational abilities, how should the law and policy respond when the abilities of such people surpass those of the general population? And what basic human and legal rights should be afforded to people equipped with cyborg technology as they become more machine and (...) less biology? As other issues of importance, if a neuroprosthetic device is accessed by a third party and done to edit one’s memory or to plant a new memory in one’s mind, or even to place an ad for a commercial product in one’s consciousness, should there be a law of cognitive liberty or of “neuro-advertising” that applies? This paper discusses laws and statutes enacted across several jurisdictions which apply to cyborg technologies with a particular emphasis on legal doctrine which relates to neuroprosthetic devices. (shrink)

In Blockchain Democracy, William Magnuson provides a breathtaking tour of the world of blockchain and bitcoin, from their origins in the online scribblings of a shadowy figure named Satoshi Nakamoto, to their furious rise and dramatic crash in the 2010s, to their ignominious connections to the dark web and online crime. Magnuson argues that blockchain's popularity stands as a testament both to the depth of distrust of government today, and also to the fervent and undying belief that technology and (...) the world of cyberspace can provide an answer. He demonstrates how blockchain's failings provide broader lessons about what happens when technology runs up against the stubborn realities of law, markets, and human nature. This book should be read by anyone interested in understanding how technology is changing our democracy, and how democracy is changing our technology. (shrink)

How did the events of the early modern period affect the way gender and the self were represented? This collection of essays attempts to respond to this question by analysing a wide spectrum of cultural concerns - humanism, technology, science, law, anatomy, literacy, domesticity, colonialism, erotic practices, and the theatre - in order to delineate the history of subjectivity and its relationship with the postmodern fragmented subject. The scope of this analysis expands the terrain explored by feminist theory, while (...) its feminist focus reveals that the subject is always gendered - although the terms in which gender is conceived and represented change across history. Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture not only explores the representation of gendered subjects, but in its commitment to balancing the productive tensions of methodological diversity, also speaks to contemporary challenges facing feminism. (shrink)

Society has historically not taken a benign view of genetic disease. The laws permitting sterilization of the mentally re tarded~ and those proscribing consanguineous marriages are but two examples. Indeed as far back as the 5th-10th centuries, B.C.E., consanguineous unions were outlawed (Leviticus XVIII, 6). Case law has traditionally tended toward the conservative. It is reactive rather than directive, exerting its influence only after an individual or group has sustained injury and brought suit. In contrast, state legislatures have not been (...) inhibited in enacting statutes. Many of their products can be characterized as hasty, unnecessary, ill-conceived, and based on the heart rather than the head. Moreover the lack of expert consultation sought has also been remarkable. One state legislature, for example, has advocated immunization for sickle cell anemia! Many others have enacted laws for the screening of inborn errors of metabolism, e.g., phenylketon uria, but have poorly defined the lines of responsibility to secure compliance. A spate of specific disease-related bills has emerged in the u.S. Congress, each seeking recognition and appropriations. Sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, Cooley's anemia and Tay-Sachs disease have been among the front-runners for support. Finally, in 1975, Congress has begun to examine an omnibus bill concerning all forms of genetic disease. The bill, termed the National Genetic Diseases Act is, however, still far from being enacted. (shrink)

Science and Technology Ethics re-examines the ethics by which we live and asks the question: do we have in place the ethical guidelines through which we can incorporate these developments with the minimum of disruption and disaffection? It assesses the ethical systems in place and proposes new approaches to our scientific and engineering processes and products, our social contacts, biology and informatics, the military industry and our environmental responsibilities. The volume is multidisciplinary and reflects the aim of the book (...) to promote a state of the art assessment of these issues. Science and Technology Ethics is a much-needed discussion of the scientific developments that have major effects on the way we live. It will be of interest to all students of science and technology and all professionals involved with administrating laws in these fields. (shrink)

Risk analysis as a regulatory driver has now become firmly entrenched in public health and environmental protection. Risk analysis at any level essentially has to accommodate two gut feelings of the constituency: whether society should be risk-prone or risk averse, and whether government and its institutions can be trusted to make the necessary decisions with a high or a low degree of discretion. The precautionary principle (or rejection thereof) arguably is the ultimate reflection of the promotion of risk to a (...) societal value. There is no doubt that especially amongst the representatives of the Member States (as opposed to the officials at the European Commission), public (pre)caution with respect to the long-term environmental and public health implications of gene technology influenced the reluctance to allow marketing of GM foods and feeds until a strict regulatory regime had been rolled out. Industry would argue that the delay in regulation, as well as the eventual regime was of such a nature as to stifle the technology. This contribution reviews a number of features of standard EU risk analysis decisions, so as to assess its current propensity towards smothering rather than smoothing the introduction of new technology. The current development of a regulatory framework for nanotechnology serves as a case study. (shrink)

In this article I analyse the extent to which there has been a shift in the cultural turn in legal scholarship and specifically from visual to what I call material jurisprudence, that is from visual to material ways of knowing law. I do so through an analysis of Desmond Manderson’s edited collection, Law and the Visual: Representations, Technologies, Critique, and Katherine Biber’s monograph, In Crime’s Archive: The Cultural Afterlife of Evidence. Inspired by the material turn in the arts and humanities (...) I apply a material lens as defined by historians of emotions working within this turn to these books. Using this lens, I analyse the extent to which the authors conceptualise and analyse their primary sources in material terms. In so doing it is my intention to encourage scholars of visual jurisprudence to consider the multisensorial nature of law by considering the material as a constitutive part or instead of the visual as has happened elsewhere in the arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as to do so with greater specificity and depth. (shrink)

The focus of this book is on the epistemological and hermeneutic implications of data science and artificial intelligence for democracy and the Rule of Law. How do the normative effects of automated decision systems or the interventions of robotic fellow 'beings' compare to the legal effect of written and unwritten law? To investigate these questions the book brings together two disciplinary perspectives rarely combined within the framework of one volume. One starts from the perspective of 'code and law' and the (...) other develops from the domain of 'law and literature'. Integrating original analyses of relevant novels or films, the authors discuss how computational technologies challenge traditional forms of legal thought and affect the regulation of human behavior. Thus, pertinent questions are raised about the theoretical assumptions underlying both scientific and legal practice. (shrink)

Decision‐aiding software is probably the most important technological innovation from the perspective of lawyer decision‐making, as contrasted to efficient office management. That kind of technological breakthrough can be helpful to lawyers in negotiating settlements favorable to their clients without expensive litigation. The technology makes use of benefit‐cost analysis, multi‐criteria decision analysis, spreadsheet software, and especially super‐optimizing analysis whereby plaintiffs, defendants, and other parties can all come out ahead of their best initial expectations simultaneously. Decision‐aiding software can also be helpful (...) to lawyers in evaluating alternative precedents, statutes, regulations, and other legal policies to arrive at versions favorable to their clients without an expensive adoption campaign. (shrink)

Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law. With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors, and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which (...) states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law - international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law - create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics - including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict, and the impact of science and technology - it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume. This book's posthuman engagement with central international legal debates, prefaced by the leading scholar in the field of posthuman theory, provides a perfect resource for students and scholars in international law, as well as critical and socio-legal theorists, and others with interests in posthuman thought, technology, colonialism and ecology. (shrink)