Biotechnology and culture : bodies, anxieties, ethics / edited by Paul E. Brodwin.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Brodwin, Paul.

Series:

Theories of contemporary culture ; v. 25.

Theories of contemporary culture ; v. 25

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biotechnology--Social aspects.

Biotechnology.

Physical Description:

vi, 296 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Bloomington : Indiana University Pess, [2000]

Summary:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

025333831X

0253214289

OCLC:

44578859