The Atomized Body: The Cultural Life of Stem Cells, Genes, and Neurons - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9187121921 ISBN 13: 9789187121920

Verlag: Nordic Academic Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Referring to the focus of the biosciences on molecular "particles" of the human biology—such as stem cells, genes, and neurons—this account examines the relationships between culture, society, and bioscientific research. Showing that the atomized body is indeed socially and culturally embedded, in plural and complex ways, it argues that biomedicine and biotechnology do not only intersect with the human body, but also reshape our perceptions of selfhood and life. From a multidisciplinary perspective, this volume explores the biosciences and the atomized body in their social, cultural, and philosophical contexts.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Max Liljefors is an associate professor of art history and visual studies at Lund University in Sweden. Susanne Lundin is a professor in ethnology at Lund University and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. She is the editor of Amalgamations and Gene Technology and Economy. Andréa Wiszmeg is a PhD in ethnology at Lund University. She examines societal and cultural implications of neurological and genetic research for patients and the public.

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The Atomized Body

The Cultural Life of Stem Cells, Genes and Neurons

By Max Liljefors, Susanne Lundin, Andréa Wiszmeg, Alain Le Nouail

Nordic Academic Press

Copyright © 2012 Nordic Academic Press and the authors
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-91-87121-92-0

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
1. Moral accounting. Ethics and praxis in biomedical research Susanne Lundin, 
2. A molecular body in a digital society. From practical biosociality to online biosociality Niclas Hagen, 
3. Medical need, ethical scepticism. Clashing views on the use of fœtuses in Parkinson's disease research Andréa Wiszmeg, 
4. Ambivalent embodiment. Affective values and rationality René Rosfort, 
5. Interlacing the brain, contextualizing the body. Relational understandings in social neuroscience Stefan Beck, 
6. Neuronal fantasies. Reading neuroscience with Schreber Max Liljefors, 
7. The scan-portrait. Geographies and geometries of perception Silvia Casini, 
8. Credibility and legitimacy. Challenges to interdisciplinary research Elin Bommenel, 
Colour Plate, 
About the Authors, 

CHAPTER 1

Moral accounting

Ethics and praxis in biomedical research

Susanne Lundin

What circulates between scientists and non-specialists or even between the scientists of one discipline and other disciplines are at best the results, never the cooking. You are never allowed to enter the kitchen of science. (Bourdieu 1984/1992)

Today's biomedicine — and not least human genome research — has the knowledge and the tools to map the origins of mankind, enter the human present, and change our future. These circumstances have led to hopes, but also fears, in Swedish society just as much as internationally. This process is, as sociologist Ulrich Beck discusses, due to development and modernization themselves having become reflexive (Beck 1986). This means that the use of technology is, of necessity, dogged by discussions of its consequences. After more than two decades of ethical discussions, the Swedish population has more and more accepted science. Despite this increasing acceptance, the utopias of genome research continue to go hand in hand with terrifying scenarios and dystopias (Koch & Høyer 2007).

These utopias and dystopias are often portrayed according to genre. For example, gene technology is often perceived as something positive when the purpose is to find a cure for human diseases or rare hereditary ailments, but is usually seen as hazardous when the technology is applied to Nature (see Ideland 2004). There are also clear labels for the users of the technology and its receivers. The Researcher and the Public form one such pairing of opposites, where the former is often described in terms of heroism or villainy, and the latter is without knowledge and power. The fact that generalizations and contradictions appear is naturally not surprising, but should be understood as cultural coping with medical developments. This cultural analytical insight is one thing; it is a completely different matter to consider the societal consequences of the categorizations. Such dichotomic thinking is evident in the formulation of ethical rules and research policy, and in the organization of health care — and it strongly influences individual people's conceptions and personal choices. To be defined as Researcher (villain or hero) by the Public thus makes demands on the individual, with both professional roles and private attitudes to biomedicine the objects of much soul- searching. It is the interaction between these structural processes and individual attitudes that is the focus of the analysis. This essay will show what is included in the category of Researcher and will discuss whether ethical positions are integrated in biomedical knowledge production.

My analytical starting-point is a cultural analytic, ethnological, and critical medical anthropology (see Lock & Nguyen 2010; Pálsson & Rabinow 2001). I also draw on studies that discuss the social and cultural constructions of categories. Just as there is no 'pure' public, as Herbert Gottweis (2008) calls it, there is no pure expertise. These theoretic models and assumptions emanate from complexity and aim to describe which conditions pertain, but also ask why and what the societal consequences might be (Lundin 2008). Against this background my assumption is that there is a risk in creating watertight lines between different groups, in this case between Researcher and Public. Groups find it harder to exchange thoughts than individuals — and communication is what is needed when dealing with the complicated issues of biomedicine. It matters whether we talk about researchers as scientific representatives or if they are described as people who do research. Representatives are often defined in black-and-white terms, whereas individuals are complex, contradictory, and situation-specific. Unlike studies that examine Researchers (Bourdieu 1984/1992; Knorr Cetina 1999) I would like to dismantle these categories and show how individual researchers may choose to reason on ethical issues. Running throughout the essay is the idea of what ethics, or rather what the talk about ethics, mean to researchers when making their own professional role culturally manageable (Høyer & Tutton 2005).

The main empirical material consists of the exchanges among a discussion group of researchers from Lund University in Sweden, where the work is highly charged with hopes and fears. The discussions took place in 2003–2004. This material is viewed against analyses from some of my previous work and recent studies in biology and culture. My starting-point is that the participants of the discussions are researchers as well as individuals in a culturally determined, reflexive society, and I will consider how they navigate between different kinds of attitudes — between their evident place in a profession and an equally evident belonging in an overall cultural system. The essay thus presents how they sometimes voice the kinds of opinions that the Public has ascribed to them as Researchers, and sometimes express their private moral perceptions that at times coincide with the perceptions of laypeople, but also how the participants in the discussions offer strategic and pragmatic formulations that illustrate the inner logic that runs the professional community — and they open the way to what the culture sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in the introductory quotation, aptly calls the kitchen of science.

How it all started

Through his arguments on position-specific fields — meaning those arenas in which the struggle turns on specific interests, such as the power to define what is knowledge and what is morally acceptable — Bourdieu (1984, 1984/1992) provides tools with which to tackle the role of bioscience in society. But as he himself says, it is hard to enter the specialists' kitchen and learn about the research process. For my purposes, finding out how ethical reflections are manifested in the research community, the focus has to be on operating on the level of the individual or rather towards the interaction between individual and society. The anthropologist Emily Martin (1994) has described this process as a complex system — a communicative network that entwines individual and biological entities with social contexts (Lakoff & Johnson 1999). One way to approach these complex systems and to enter the specialists' kitchen is...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Nordic Academic Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 9187121921
• ISBN 13: 9789187121920
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 228
• Herausgeber: Liljefors Max, Lundin Susanne, Wiszmeg Andrea
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar