Although critiques of humanism are not new, the currency of posthumanist discourse on the nonhuman – the animal, the environment, or the object – suggests rising concerns about humanity’s place in the ecological order. This article interrogates Cary Wolfe's posthumanist framework as he approaches the questions of activism and agency in the context of animal ethics and disability politics. By drawing attention to the contradictions in his own commitments to rethinking human exceptionalism, I examine how Wolfe's appeal for a more (...) compassionate account of ethics vis-à-vis the notion of ‘trans-species empathy’ can be more gainfully addressed through the work of feminist and quantum physicist Karen Barad. This essay contends that by preserving the difference between the human and the nonhuman as something that is given rather than interrogated, the assumption of ‘the human’ as a self-contained identity is left unchanged and unchallenged. (shrink)

Social scientists operate in a range of roles within the public engagement with science and technology agenda. Social scientists’ strengths in respect to “translation” and “intermediary” skills have captured attention at a time of disciplinary pressure to demonstrate impact. This article explores how social scientists’ engaged in public engagement with science and technology consider their role(s), drawing on 21 semistructured interviews and Horst and Michael’s proposals of an emergence model, in addition to ongoing discussions related to expertise. The findings suggest (...) there are many benefits when social scientists engage with “strangers,” both scientific and public, but that focusing only on pragmatic elements misses the true opportunity such working relationships can offer among critical friends. (shrink)

This article examines the issues that are at stake in the current resurgence of interest in the subject of habit. We focus on the role that habit has played in conceptions of the relations between body and society, and the respects in which such conceptions have been implicated in processes of governance. We argue that habit has typically constituted a point of leverage for regulatory practices that seek to effect some realignment of the relations between different components of personhood – (...) will, character, memory and instinct, for example – in order to bring about a specific end. In reviewing its functioning in this regard across a range of modern disciplines – philosophy, psychology, sociology – we explore the tensions between its use and interpretation in different lineages: in particular, the Cartesian–Kantian/ravaisson–bergson–deleuze lineages. The article then identifies how these questions are addressed across the contributions collected in this special issue. (shrink)

Bourdieu suggested that the habitus contains the ‘genetic information’ which both allows and disposes successive generations to reproduce the world they inherit from their parents’ generation. While his writings on habitus are concerned with embodied dispositions, biological processes are not a feature of the practical reason of habitus. Recent critiques of the separate worlds of biology and culture, and the rise in epigenetics, provide new opportunities for expanding theoretical concepts like habitus. Using obesity science as a case study we attempt (...) to conceptualise the enfolding of biological and social processes (via a Deleuzian metaphor) to develop a concept of biohabitus – reconfiguring how social and biological environments interact across the life course, and may be transmitted and transformed intergenerationally. In conclusion we suggest that the enfolding and reproduction of social life that Bourdieu articulated as habitus is a useful theoretical frame that can be enhanced to critically develop epigenetic understandings of obesity, and vice versa. (shrink)

The public’s understanding of forensic DNA databases remains undertheorized and few empirical studies have been produced. This article aims to address this omission by exploring the answers to an open-ended question taken from an online questionnaire regarding the reasons for individuals’ voluntarily accepting or refusing to allow their DNA profile to be included in the Portuguese forensic DNA database. The analysis is undertaken from the perspective of biological citizenship and the simultaneous empowering and disempowering effects of surveillance. The results indicate (...) a pragmatic ethical framework that is linked to the cultural and emotional elements of altruism, resistance, stigma, and social representations of what is beneficial or harmful to the individual and to society. These subjectivities are anchored in commonplace images and metaphors for genetics, DNA, and forensic science that circulate in the messages transmitted by the media which pervade everyday life; hierarchies of trust in science and the justice system; and moral categories associated with the individual self-judgment in relation to crime, surveillance, and social order. (shrink)

Recent medical innovations like ‘omics’ technologies, mobile health (mHealth) applications or telemedicine are perceived as part of a shift towards a more preventive, participatory and affordable healthcare model. These innovations are often regarded as ‘disruptive technologies’. It is a topic of debate to what extent these technologies may transform the medical enterprise, and relatedly, what this means for medical ethics. The question of whether these developments disrupt established ethical principles like respect for autonomy has indeed received increasing normative attention during (...) the past years. Yet, more fundamental ethical considerations of a possible disruption of the concept of ‘medical necessity’ (and the potential ensuing clinical ramifications) have been limited if not absent. It is our modest – though morally and practically relevant – aim to address this objective in this article, by exploring how the current wave of allegedly disruptive innovation is invoking a resurgence of this concept and related debates on ‘the’ goal(s) of medicine. (shrink)

The neurosciences challenge the ‘standard social science’ model of human behaviour particularly with reference to violence. Although explanations of violence are interdisciplinary it remains controversial to work across the division between the social and biological sciences. Neuroscience can be subject to familiar sociological critiques of scientism and reductionism but this paper considers whether this view should be reassessed. Concepts of brain plasticity and epigenetics could prompt reconsideration of the dichotomy of the social and natural while raising questions about the intersections (...) of materiality, embodiment and social action. Although violence is intimately bound up with the body, sociologies of both violence and the body remain on the surface and rarely go under the skin or skulls of violent actors. This article argues for a non-reductionist realist explanation of violent behaviour that is also interdisciplinary and offers the potential to generate nuanced understandings of violent processes. It concludes that sociology should engage critically and creatively with the neuroscience of violence. (shrink)

Much like the trade and traits of bubbles in financial markets, similar bubbles appear on the science market. When economic bubbles burst, the drop in prices causes the crash of unsustainable investments leading to an investor confidence crisis possibly followed by a financial panic. But when bubbles appear in science, truth and reliability are the first victims. This paper explores how fashions in research funding and research management may turn science into something like a bubble economy.

Recent developments in the psychological and social sciences have seen a surge of attention to concepts of embodiment. The burgeoning field of embodied cognition, as well as the long-standing tradition of phenomenological philosophy, offer valuable insights for theorising how people come to understand the world around them. However, the implications of human embodiment have been largely neglected by one of the key frameworks for conceptualising the development of social knowledge: Social Representations Theory. This article seeks to spark a dialogue between (...) Social Representations Theory and embodiment research. It outlines the position the body occupies in the existing theoretical and empirical social representations literature, and argues that incorporating concepts gleaned from embodiment research may facilitate a more comprehensive account of the aetiology of social representations. The value of analytic attention to embodiment is illustrated with reference to a recent study of social representations of neuroscience, which suggested that embodied experience can shape the extent to which people engage with certain topics, the conditions under which they do so, and the conceptual and affective content of the ensuing representations. The article argues that expanding Social Representations Theory's methodological and conceptual toolkit, in order to illuminate the interplay between embodied experience and social communication in the development of common-sense knowledge, promises productive directions for empirical and theoretical advancement. (shrink)

The rise of molecular epigenetics over the last few years promises to bring the discourse about the sociality and susceptibility to environmental influences of the brain to an entirely new level. Epigenetics deals with molecular mechanisms such as gene expression, which may embed in the organism “memories” of social experiences and environmental exposures. These changes in gene expression may be transmitted across generations without changes in the DNA sequence. Epigenetics is the most advanced example of the new postgenomic and context-dependent (...) view of the gene that is making its way into contemporary biology. In my article I will use the current emergence of epigenetics and its link with neuroscience research as an example of the new, and in a way unprecedented sociality of contemporary biology. After a review of the most important developments of epigenetic research, and some of its links with neuroscience, in the second part I reflect on the novel challenges that epigenetics presents for the social sciences for a re-conceptualization of the link between the biological and the social in a postgenomic age. Although epigenetics remains a contested, hyped, and often uncritical terrain, I claim that especially when conceptualized in broader non-genecentric frameworks,. (shrink)

This article responds to two problems confronting social and human sciences: how to relate to digital data, inasmuch as it challenges established social science methods; and how to relate to life sciences, insofar as they produce knowledge that impinges on our own ways of knowing. In a case study of proteomics, we explore how digital devices grapple with large-scale multiples – of molecules, databases, machines and people. We analyse one particular visual device, a cluster-heatmap, produced by scientists by mining data (...) from a large number of experiments on human blood plasma proteins. These proteins make up a myriad multiple whose identity shifts in many ways. Rather than displaying data about proteins, the heatmap constructs a view of the differences and similarities between experiments. We find this attempt to construct a view on many things at once instructive in thinking about multiples more generally. Instead of flattening molecular ‘life itself’, this visual device superimposes layers of digital devices and techniques from a wide variety of disciplines. This layering suggests a different way of relating to the life sciences more generally: rather than what they know, how they know might be of use to social and human sciences when attending to multiplicities. (shrink)

Critical Interventions in the Life Sciences – not a Task for the History of Science? This brief paper asks whether historians of science – along with scholars from Science and Technology Studies – should intervene if, in their research, they come across ethically and societally problematic behavior of scientists. I discuss whether and how interventions can be made in such a case that go beyond publishing scholarly articles. In contrast to Nicholas Rose, who claims that determinism and reductionism are no (...) longer driving forces in the life sciences and that scholars from history of science and STS should hence form new relationships with life scientists, I hold that such a general understanding of ‘life scientists’ is at odds with the reality of scientific communities. The challenge is rather to find those colleagues in the life sciences who agree with our criticism. At the same time, such discipline‐crossing collaborative interventions need to carefully watch out for responsible communication in all directions. (shrink)

Gene editing tools are ‘revolutionizing’ microbiological research. Much of the public debate focuses on the possibility of human germ line applications. The use of genome editing to alter non-human animals, however, will have more immediate impacts on our daily lives. Genome edited animals are used for basic biological and biomedical research and could soon play a role in the livestock industry and ecosystem management. Genome editing thus provides an occasion to rethink societal narratives about the relationships between humans and other (...) animals. Even though the technique can be easily incorporated as an example into a conventional storyline about the development of the modern life sciences as striving for control over nature, it can also help to highlight the anthropocentric biases expressed in these narratives and demonstrate the continuities between humans and other animals. (shrink)

In a recent article published in Body & Society, Nikolas Rose considers what he takes to be possible historical–ontological implications of recent developments in brain-decoding technologies. He argues that such technologies embody the premise that the brain is the real locus of mental states and processes, hence that a new materialist ontology of thought may be in the process of emerging through technological demonstration rather than through philosophical resolution. In this reply, I offer some reasons for being sceptical about such (...) claims. I argue that the ontology in question hardly amounts to anything particularly new, that technologies cannot demonstrate anything in these matters independently of philosophical inclinations of some kind and that it is at least an open issue whether the ontology in question can secure its claim to be a materialist ontology of thought. (shrink)

Building from recent attempts in the humanities and social sciences to conceive of creative, entangled ways of doing interdisciplinary work, I turn to Braidotti’s ‘nomadic ontology’ to (re)vision the human body without a brain. Her exploration of the body as a ‘threshold of transformations’ is put into conversation with Deleuze’s comments on neurobiology to consider what a brainless body might do, or undo, in neuroscientific practice. I ground discussion in a case study, detailing the practices of brain decoding or ‘mind (...) reading,’ re-interpreting Rose’s account. Therein, I argue that the technical-social configurations of brain decoding are unlikely to usher in a radically new ontology, as Rose suggests. To better match Rose’s vision and align with new ontologies in cultural theory, I argue that neuroscience must become nomadic and embrace a body without a brain. I then conclude with six recommendations towards a nomadic neuroscience. (shrink)

This article argues that feminist theorists should conceive of the life sciences not only as a factual resource but also as a figural resource. It proposes that in shifting our conceptual orientation to biological science from fact to figure, feminists will be able to give theoretical life to scientific findings about the ways in which social environments and material habitats are processes integral to our development, growth, and social and political well-being. The figuration of ourselves as specifically biocultural creatures will (...) enable feminists to gain a stronger theoretical and analytic purchase on the ongoing mutual shaping of the biological and social dimensions of existence. This, in turn, will enable feminists to creatively re-imagine the fields and fora of feminist politics. (shrink)

In this article, we consider how certain types of contemporary biosocial psychiatric research conceptualise and explicate biology-social relations. We compare the historic biopsychosocial model to recent examples of social defeat research on schizophrenia and cultural neuroscience work on affective disorders. This comparison reveals how the contemporary turn towards the ‘biosocial’ within psychiatric research relies upon ideas of the psychological as an interface. This is problematic because psychological notions of ‘experience’ are used as the central mechanics of biosocial processes, but lack (...) any meaningful engagement with considerable debates within psychology and cognitive science about what the mind, and indeed the psychological, actually is, its relationship to social life, and how we should study it. The psychological interface is therefore vital to these biosocial hypotheses but is remarkably underdeveloped in comparison to its biological and sociological components. We argue that biosocial psychiatric research could gain a great deal from engaging with contemporary theorisations of experience and being more critical of vague appeals to psychological phenomena. (shrink)

Suicide is complex; yet suicide research is dominated by ‘psy’ disciplines which can falter when seeking to explain social patterning of suicide rates, and how this relates to individual actions. This article discusses a multidisciplinary report which aimed to advance understandings of socioeconomic inequalities in suicide rates in the UK. Contrasts are drawn between health psychology and sociology. Important intersections are highlighted, including a lack of attention to socioeconomic inequalities, and an emphasis on adverse life experiences and emotions to understand (...) inequalities and suicide. There are also curious disconnects, both within and between relevant psychological and sociological perspectives. The article argues that there are significant gaps in existing theorization regarding suicide, which can only be addressed through meaningful inter-disciplinary collaborations between sociologists, psychologists and others. Current theorization in mainstream suicide research is limited by its failure to engage with enduring, yet vitally important sociological debates regarding structure and agency, nature and culture. (shrink)

This introduction to the special issue focuses on the messiness of biopolitics. The biopolitical is a composite mixture of heterogeneous, and sometimes conflicting, forces, discourses, institutions, laws, and practices that are embedded in and animated by material social relations. In the now extensive literature on biopolitics, our biopolitical era is characterized by the blending and mixing of what were previously thought of as separate realms: life is biologized, politics is biologized and biology is politicized, life and politics have been economized, (...) and making life is intertwined with making death. This article provides a general overview of two strains of these biopolitical entanglements. It begins by examining the largely French and Italian focus on how politics and life have become economized in contemporary neoliberalism. We then turn to the mainly Anglo-American focus on the biologization of life. It concludes by taking up the central problem that arises from the messiness of biopolitics: whither the political of the biopolitical economy of life? Is there such a thing as the political proper in our era? If not, then what type of politics must be deployed to address the issues of our biopolis? (shrink)

Drawing on a historical ethnography of how Brazil’s post-dictatorial psychiatric reforms have shaped young people’s lives, this paper builds on Eve Sedgwick’s analysis of the hermeneutics of suspicion to show that narrow applications of Foucault’s biopower concept nurture forms of resistance to bio-reductionism centred primarily on epistemic deconstruction. To unsettle this hermeneutic, I put young people’s theories of power into conversation with Georges Canguilhem’s concept of the milieu and with feminist scholars’ work on prefigurative politics. I introduce the concepts of (...) threading and unthreading to consider how one subject of biopower, the child-like biobehavioural figure, was continuously being threaded within a specific milieu and in relation to another key figure: the elite angst-ridden ‘storm-and-stress’ adolescent. Young people’s subsequent unthreading and reweaving politics, flourishing in co-construction with what I call the politicizing clinic, illustrate how decolonial pedagogies can incrementally change the patterning of social life. (shrink)

In this paper I first offer a systematic outline of a series of conceptual novelties in the life-sciences that have favoured, over the last three decades, the emergence of a more social view of biology. I focus in particular on three areas of investigation: (1) technical changes in evolutionary literature that have provoked a rethinking of the possibility of altruism, morality and prosocial behaviours in evolution; (2) changes in neuroscience, from an understanding of the brain as an isolated data processor (...) to the ultrasocial and multiply connected social brain of contemporary neuroscience; and (3) changes in molecular biology, from the view of the gene as an autonomous master of development to the ‘reactive genome’ of the new emerging field of molecular epigenetics. In the second section I reflect on the possible implications for the social sciences of this novel biosocial terrain and argue that the postgenomic language of extended epigenetic inheritance and blurring of the nature/nurture boundaries will be as provocative for neo-Darwinism as it is for the social sciences as we have known them. Signs of a new biosocial language are emerging in several social-science disciplines and this may represent an exciting theoretical novelty for twenty-first social theory. (shrink)