Genetic Imaginations

The title of this book derives from C. Wright Mills’ classic The Sociological Imagination (Penguin, 1970), in which he sees the essential project of social science as the use of the imagination to 'grasp history and biography and the relations between the two in society'. This enables the social scientist to 'range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self'. Another of Mills’ concerns was the relationship between 'the personal troubles of the milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure' and these are most acutely illustrated in human genetics, the most personal of the new technologies. The chapters in this volume address these issues through discussions of choice and informed decision-making, risks and hazards, the economic and political organization of new technology, and the public as well as the scientist’s understanding of science. The methods used range from detailed ethnographies, through deconstruction's of text and action, to surveys and interviews.

Oxford Textual Perspectives is a series of informative and provocative studies focused upon literary texts (conceived of in the broadest sense of that term) and the technologies, cultures, and communities that produce, inform, and receive them. It provides fresh interpretations of fundamental works and of the vital and challenging issues emerging in English literary studies. By engaging with the materiality of the literary text, its production, and reception history, and frequently testing and exploring the boundaries of the notion of text itself, the volumes in the series question familiar frameworks and provide innovative interpretations of both canonical and less well-known works. This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major impact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E. O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book maps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying degrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and Jackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective. As advances in postgenomics, especially epigenetics, provoke increasing public interest and concern, this book offers a timely analysis of debates that have fundamentally altered our understanding of what it means to be human.

An expert in the field of social and biological ethics offers an analysis of the impact of scientists' ever-increasing knowledge of the genetic basis of life on family, society, and mortality.

This is the first book to explore the dramatic impact of genetics on literary fiction over the past four decades. After James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the subsequent cracking of the genetic code, a gene-centric discourse developed which had a major impact not only on biological science but on wider culture. As figures like E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins popularised the neo-Darwinian view that behaviour was driven by genetic self-interest, novelists were both compelled and unnerved by such a vision of the origins and ends of life. This book maps the ways in which Doris Lessing, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, and Kazuo Ishiguro wrestled with the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of human nature and with the challenge it posed to humanist beliefs about identity, agency, and morality. It argues that these novelists were alienated to varying degrees by neo-Darwinian arguments but that the recent shift to postgenomic science has enabled a greater rapprochement between biological and (post)humanist concepts of human nature. The postgenomic view of organisms as agentic and interactive is echoed in the life-writing of Margaret Drabble and Jackie Kay, which also explores the ethical implications of this holistic biological perspective.

Imagining Justice seeks to move away from normative thinking about justice, particularly in the area of justice education, suggesting that what is needed today is a way to think about the enterprise of justice that will capture its full potential. By providing an introduction to the intellectual potential of the field of justice, we can acknowledge that the field is wider than formerly recognized, and ultimately imagine the full richness that justice can encompass.

Steve Fuller examines the history of the social sciences, covering most classic theorists and themes, to discover the key contributors to sociology and how relevant they remain today.

Presents the first full-length study of the depiction and assessment of surveillance in literature and film.

Genetics seems more popular then ever. DNA technology not only sustains large areas of biomedicine and business, but also prevails in social and legal practices and takes root in cultural products. Since the late 1950s, the public image of genetics metamorphosed from a suspect branch of research into a thriving, well-funded field of biomedicine. Images and imaginations have played a crucial role in the popularization of genetic knowledge. The media played up images of engineered bugs, scientists promoted images of selfish genes and science fiction writers infested the imagination with stories of cloned monsters. Imag e nation examines the role of science, journalism and fiction in the popularization of genetics.