Transhumanisms And Biotechnologies In Consumer Society

Transhumanisms and Biotechnologies in Consumer Society offers new, critical perspectives on the impact of 'life-enhancing' technological advancements on consumer identity positions and market evolutions. Technoprogressive innovations that include body modification technologies and reproductive technologies have enabled people to transcend bodily constraints. In parallel, they provoke necessary, critical interrogation around human capabilities, technological possibilities, gender equality, feminism, personal identity, bioethics, markets and morality. The contributions in this book re-evaluate these topics and elucidate some of the vexed relationships between consumers of biotechnologies and markets they consider restrictive or misleading. Secondly, by illustrating consumers’ questioning of and resistance to biomedical, market imperatives, they highlight how the notion of consumer sovereignty, consumer influence over markets, has now advanced into novel forms of consumer activism made manifest through contemporary health justice movements. The chapters in this book also uncover profoundly personal consumer accounts on coping with and managing bodies-in-transition, focusing on illness, self-perception, survivorship and the vicissitudes of these corporeal experiences. This book will allow readers to understand how accelerated technological market changes are being experienced and creatively countered at the societal and individual level. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Marketing Management.

This book provides an introductory overview to the social debate over enhancement technologies with an overview of the transhumanists' call to bypass human nature and conservationists' argument in defense of it. The author present this controversy as it unfolds in the contest between transhumanists proponents and conservationists, who push back with an argument to conserve human nature and to ban enhancement technologies. This book provides an overview of the key contested points and present the debate in an orderly, constructive fashion. Readers are informed about the discussion over humanism, the tension between science and religion, and the interpretation of socio-technological revolutions; and are invited to make up their own mind about one of the most challenging topics concerning the social and ethical implications of technological advancements.

Bringing together the latest thinking on both celebrity brands and celebrity culture from academics specialising in the field of marketing, this book explores a range of insightful contexts in order to add vigour and vitality to our understanding of the connections between celebrities, markets and culture. It unpacks the identity theoretics which have their origins in the turn to celebrity culture and the spectacle and glamour of mass-media practices. In doing so, the contributors hint at new forms of individuation where the line between the virtual and the actual is blurred, and where images of celebrities construct and deconstruct themselves. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

This book examines the contributions of the transhumanism approach to technology, in particular the contributed chapters are wary of the implications of this popular idea. The volume is organized into four parts concerning philosophical, military, technological and sociological aspects of transhumanism, but the reader is free to choose various reading patterns. Topics discussed include gene editing, the singularity, ethical machines, metaphors in AI, mind uploading, and the philosophy of art, and some perspectives taken or discussed examine transhumanism within the context of the philosophy of technology, transhumanism as a derailed anthropology, and critical sociological aspects that consider transhumanism in the context of topical concerns such as whiteness, maleness, and masculinity. The book will be of value to researchers engaged with artificial intelligence, and the ethical, societal, and philosophical impacts of science and technology.

Outlining the key themes, concepts and theoretical areas in the field, this book draws on contributions from prominent researchers to unravel the complexities of consumer culture by looking at how it affects personal identity, social interactions and the consuming human being. A field which is characterised as being theoretically challenging is made accessible through learning features that include case study material, critical reflection, research directions, further reading and a broad mix of the types of consumers and consumption contexts including emerging markets and economies. The structure of the book is designed to help students map the field in the way it is interpreted by researchers and follows the conceptual mapping in the classic Arnould & Thompson 2005 journal article. The book is organised into three parts - the Consumption Identity, Marketplace Cultures and the Socio-Historic Patterning of Consumption. Insight is offered into both the historical roots of consumer culture and the everyday experiences of navigating the contemporary marketplace. The book is supported by a collection of international case studies and real world scenarios, including: How Fashion Bloggers Rule the Fashion World; the Kendall Jenner Pepsi Commercial; Professional Beer Pong, Military Recruiting Campaigns, The World Health Organization and the Corporatization of Education. The go-to text for anyone new to CCT or postgraduate students writing a CCT-related thesis.

This publication considers urbanism as a fundamental preventive discipline, one which has the capacity to enhance the health and living quality of urban populations. It investigates the relationships between urbanism, urban health, and the built environment, with a specific focus on physical activity as one of the principal contributors to health conditions in the city. From an urban design and planning perspective, author Elena Dorato tackles the complex relationships and cause-and-effect processes that link the characteristics of cities to the well-being of their populations. A particular focus of her essay is on the dichotomy between the urban and human bodies.

What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.

Consumption research is burgeoning across a wide range of disciplines. The Routledge Handbook on Consumption gathers experts from around the world to provide a nuanced overview of the latest scholarship in this expanding field. At once ambitious and timely, the volume provides an ideal map for those looking to position their work, find new analytic insights and identify research gaps. With an intuitive thematic structure and resolutely international outlook, it engages with theory and methodology; markets and businesses; policies, politics and the state; and culture and everyday life. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across the social and economic sciences.