Collective Biologies

In Collective Biologies, Emily A. Wentzell uses sexual health research participation as a case study for investigating the use of individual health behaviors to aid groups facing crisis and change. Wentzell analyzes couples' experiences of a longitudinal study of HPV occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico. She observes how their experiences reflected Mexican cultural understandings of group belonging through categories like family and race. For instance, partners drew on collective rather than individualistic understandings of biology to hope that men's performance of “modern” masculinities, marriage, and healthcare via HPV research would aid groups ranging from church congregations to the Mexican populace. Thus, Wentzell challenges the common regulatory view of medical research participation as an individual pursuit. Instead, she demonstrates that medical research is a daily life arena that people might use for fixing embodied societal problems. By identifying forms of group interconnectedness as “collective biologies,” Wentzell investigates how people can use their own actions to enhance collective health and well-being in ways that neoliberal emphasis on individuality obscures.

Analyzing a longitudinal study of HPV occurrence in men in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Emily A. Wentzell explores how people can use individual health behaviors like participating in medical research to enhance group well-being amid crisis and change.

The authors introduce the reader to collective biography, an innovative research methodology for use in education and the social sciences. The methodology of collective biography overcomes the theory/practice divide, by putting theory to use in everyday life, and using everyday life to understand and to extend theory.

Help middle and high school students find the books they need for school reports quickly and easily. The author has indexed the lives and accomplishments of more than 5,700 notable men and women from ancient through modern times in this tool that will aid librarians, media specialists, and teachers with a student's search to find biographies written especially for their age group.

The concept of network as a mathematical description of a set of states, or events, linked according to a certain topology has been developed recently and has led to a novel approach of real world. This approach is no doubt important in the field of biology. In fact biological systems can be considered networks. Thus, for instance, an enzyme-catalysed reaction is a network that links, according to a certain topology, the various states of the protein and of its complexes with the substrates and products of the chemical reaction. Connections between neurons, social relations in animal and human populations are also examples of networks. Hence there is little doubt that the concept of network transgresses the boundaries between traditional scientific disciplines. This book is aimed at discussing in physical terms these exciting new topics on simple protein model lattices, supramolecular protein edifices, multienzyme and gene networks. *Physical and mathematical approach of biological phenomena. *Offers biochemists and biologists the mathematical background required to understand the text. *Associates in the same general formulation, the ideas of communication of a message and organization of a system. *Provides a clear-cut definition and mathematical expression of the concepts of reduction, integration, emergence and complexity that were so far time-honoured and vague

“At last a book that not only describes what collective biography is but also explains how to use it … The book describes how to set up collective biography workshops in which participants examine how discursive structures and power relations have both enabled and limited the conditions of possibility for their lived experience. Focusing on a more complicated reflexivity than is usually described in social science research, collective biography, inspired by Frigga Haug and refined by Davies, will no doubt be used increasingly by researchers interested in the production of subjects in a postmodern world.” Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, University of Georgia, USA This book introduces the reader to collective biography, an innovative research methodology for use in education and the social sciences. The methodology of collective biography overcomes the theory/practice divide, by putting theory to use in everyday life, and using everyday life to understand and to extend theory. Doing Collective Biography provides guidelines for developing a collective biography project and demonstrates how these guidelines emerged from and were shaped by projects on such topics as subjectivity, power, agency, reflexivity, literacy, gender, and neoliberalism at work. Each chapter gives a detailed example of collective biography in practice, showing how a group of students and/or scholars can work collaboratively to investigate aspects of the production of subjectivity, and clearly demonstrates how poststructural theory can be elaborated and refracted through the experiences of ordinary everyday life. This is key reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students on Education and social science courses with a research element, as well as for academics and professionals undertaking research projects.

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