Impressionable Biologies - Maurizio Meloni

Impressionable Biologies

From the Archaeology of Plasticity to the Sociology of Epigenetics

(Autor)

Buch | Softcover
218 Seiten
2019
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-138-04941-3 (ISBN)
49,85 inkl. MwSt
This book investigates a long history into the beliefs about the plasticity of human biology and analyses the techniques required to govern such permeability. Meloni dissects the complex sociological and biopolitical implications of this emerging plasticity, with important implications for notions of risk, responsibility, and intervention.
During the twentieth century, genes were considered the controlling force of life processes, and the transfer of DNA the definitive explanation for biological heredity. Such views shaped the politics of human heredity: in the eugenic era, controlling heredity meant intervening in the distribution of "good" and "bad" genes. However, since the turn of the twenty-first century, this centrality of genes has been challenged by a number of "postgenomic" disciplines. The rise of epigenetics in particular signals a shift from notions of biological fixedness to ideas of plasticity and "impressionability" of biological material.

This book investigates a long history of the beliefs about the plasticity of human biology, starting with ancient medicine, and analyses the biopolitical techniques required to govern such permeability. It looks at the emergence of the modern body of biomedicine as a necessary displacement or possibly reconfiguration of earlier plastic views. Finally, it analyses the returning of plasticity to contemporary postgenomic views and argues that postgenomic plasticity is neither a modernistic plasticity of instrumental management of the body nor a postmodernist celebration of potentialities. It is instead a plasticity that disrupts clear boundaries between openness and determination, individual and community, with important implications for notions of risk, responsibility and intervention.

Maurizio Meloni is a social theorist and a science and technology studies scholar. He is the author of Political Biology (Palgrave 2016), co-editor of Biosocial Matters (Wiley 2016), and chief editor of the Palgrave Handbook of Biology and Society (2018). He is Associate Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Australia.

Preface and Acknowledgements: Problematizing the Turn to Plasticity Chapter One: An Archaeology of Plasticity Chapter Two: Plasticity before Plasticity: The Humoralist Body Chapter Three: Taming Plasticity: Darwin, Selectionism, and Modern Agency Chapter Four: Epigenetics or How Matter Returned to the Genome Chapter Five: A Sociology of the Body After the Genome References Index

Erscheinungsdatum
Verlagsort London
Sprache englisch
Maße 152 x 229 mm
Gewicht 340 g
Themenwelt Studium 1. Studienabschnitt (Vorklinik) Med. Psychologie / Soziologie
Naturwissenschaften Biologie Humanbiologie
Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie
Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie
ISBN-10 1-138-04941-7 / 1138049417
ISBN-13 978-1-138-04941-3 / 9781138049413
Zustand Neuware
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