1st Edition
New Genetics, New Social Formations
New genetic technologies cut across a range of public regulatory domains and private lifeworlds, often appearing to generate an institutional void in response to the complex challenges they pose. As a result, a number of new social formations are being developed to legitimate public engagement and avoid the perceived democratic deficit that may result. Papers in this volume discuss a variety of these manifestations in a global context, including:
- genetic data banks
- committees of inquiry
- non-governmental organisations (NGOs)
- national research laboratories.
These institutions, across both health and agriculture, are explored in such diverse locations as Amazonia, China, Finland, Israel, the UK and the USA. This volume exhibits a clear thematic coherence around the impact of the new genetics and their associated technologies on new social formations, and the case studies included have a significant international focus, showing a balance between theoretical and empirical approaches in this rapidly changing field.
This innovative new volume will be of interest to postgraduates and professionals in the fields of sociology, social anthropology, science and technology studies, and environmental studies.
1 Introduction: New Genetics, New Social Formations
Peter Glasner and Paul Atkinson
2 British Public Attitudes to Agricultural Biotechnology and the
2003 GMN Nation? Public Debate: Distrust, Ambivalence and Risk
Nick Pidgeon and Wouter Poortinga
3 The UK stem cell bank: Creating safe stem cell lines and public support?
Loes Kater
4 Public Biotechnology Inquiries: From Rationality to Reflexivity
Tee Rogers-Hayden and Mavis Jones
5 The Precautionary Principle on Trial: The construction and transformation of the Precautionary Principle in the UK court context
Chie Ujita, Liz Sharp and Peter Hopkinson
6 The Social Construction of the Biotech Industry
Kean Birch
7 Biopiracy and the Bioeconomy
Paul Oldham
8 Identifying John Moore: Narratives of Persona in Patent Law Relating to Inventions of Human Origin
Hyo Yoon Kang
9 Sampling policies of Isolates of Historical Interest (IHI): the social and historical formation of research populations in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC)
Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner
10 The making of scientific knowledge in the anthropological perspective
Case studies from the French scientific community
Angela Procoli
11 Genomics and the Transformation of Knowledge: the Bioinformatics Challenge
Henrik Bruun
12 Science, Media and Society: the framing of bioethical debates around embryonic stem cell research between 2000 and 2005
Jenny Kitzinger, Clare Williams and Lesley Henderson
13 ‘Natural Forces’ – The Regulation and Discourse of Genomics and Advanced Medical Technologies in Israel
Barbara Prainsack
14 Survival of the Gene? 21st Century Visions from Genomics, Proteomics and the New Biology
Ruth McNally and Peter Glasner
Biography
Glasner, Peter; Atkinson, Paul; Greenslade, Helen