A series of studies exploring the origins of the current controversy over biotechnology, first published in 2002.

Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes. Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

Much environmental activism is caught in a logic that plays science against emotion, objective evidence against partisan aims, and human interest against a nature that has intrinsic value. Radical activists, by contrast, play down the role of science in determining environmental politics, but read their solutions to environmental problems off fixed theories of domination and oppression. Both of these approaches are based in a modern epistemology grounded in the fundamental dichotomy between the human and the natural. This binary has historically come about through the colonial oppression of other, non-Western and often non-binary ways of knowing nature and living in the world. There is an urgent need for a different, decolonised environmental activist strategy that moves away from this epistemology, recognises its colonial heritage and finds a different ground for environmental beliefs and politics. This book analyses the arguments and practices of anti-GMO activists at three different sites - the site of science, the site of the Bt cotton controversy in India, and the site of global environmental protest - to show how we can move beyond modern/colonial binaries. It will do so in dialogue with Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, María Lugones, and Gayatri C. Spivak, as well as a broader range of postcolonial and decolonial bodies of thought.

This book is the first systematic, detailed treatment of the approaches to ethical issues taken by biotech and pharmaceutical companies. The application of genetic/genomic technologies raises a whole spectrum of ethical questions affecting global health that must be addressed. Topics covered in this comprehensive survey include considerations for bioprospecting in transgenics, genomics, drug discovery, and nutrigenomics, as well as how to improve stakeholder relations, design ethical clinical trials, avoid conflicts of interest, and establish ethics advisory boards. The expert authors represent multiple disciplines including law, medicine, bioinformatics, pharmaceutics, business, and ethics.

The impact of genomics on society has been the focus of debate and conflict across the world. Contrasting views of risks and benefits, trust in science and regulation, the understanding of science, media coverage and mobilization of the public by civil society groups all have been cited as drivers of public opinion. The long running controversy is a signal that the public's view cannot be ignored in the development and implementation of new technologies arising out of genomics such as agricultural biotechnologies, genetic testing and the uses of genetic information, the cloning of human cells and tissues and transgenic animals. Written by a progressive international group of social scientists from Europe, North America and Japan, this volume presents a series of comparative perspectives on the social, ethical and legal implications of genomics. The result is a book which encapsulates the lessons to be learned from the controversies of the 1990s and raises the level of debate on the societal implications of new developments in genomics.

Drawing on the non-individualistic perspective of social representations theory, this book presents an alternative view of social identity by articulating the inseparable dynamic relationships that exist between content, process and power relations when social identity is embedded in social knowledge.

Makes the innovative effort of examining the interplay between political identity and legitimacy in the unprecedented but also unfinished development of the European Union into a fully fledged political actor.

'Crossing Over' promotes reflection on the socio-ethical, and policy and regulatory aspects of genomics and biotechnology. This collection of essays illuminates the common themes surrounding this hotly contested issue and considers the politics, public perception, ethics, media representations and future possibilities of genomics.

"Atom," "byte" and "gene" are metonymies for techno-scientific developments of the 20th century: nuclear power, computing and genetic engineering. Resistance continues to challenge these developments in public opinion. This book traces historical debates over atoms, bytes and genes which raised controversy with consequences, and argues that public opinion is a factor of the development of modern techno-science. The level and scope of public controversy is an index of resistance, examined here with a "pain analogy" which shows that just as pain impacts movement, resistance impacts techno-scientific mobilization: it signals that something is wrong, and this requires attention, elaboration and a response to the challenge. This analysis shows how different fields of enquiry deal with the resistance of social-psychological mentalities in the face of industrial, scientific and political activities inspired by projected futures.