Today, it often seems as though Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) have reached a stage of normalization, at least in some countries and among certain social groups. Apparently some practices - for example in vitro fertilization (IVF) - have become standard worldwide. The contributors to Assisted Reproduction Across Borders argue against normalization as an uncontested overall trend. This volume reflects on the state of the art of ARTs. From feminist perspectives, the contributors focus on contemporary political debates triggered by ARTs. They examine the varying ways in which ARTs are interpreted and practised in different contexts, depending on religious, moral and political approaches. Assisted Reproduction Across Borders embeds feminist analysis of ARTs across a wide variety of countries and cultural contexts, discussing controversial practices such as surrogacy from the perspective of the global South as well as the global North as well as inequalities in terms of access to IVF. This volume will appeal to scholars and students of anthropology, ethnography, philosophy, political science, history, sociology, film studies, media studies, literature, art history, area studies, and interdisciplinary areas such as gender studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

aAs more and more people use computers, the Internet and mobile phones, the study of their effects on our culture (and vice versa) becomes increasingly important. Framed as a ahow-to guide for those new to cyberstudiesa, Critical Cyberculture Studies goes some of the way to emphasising the importance and the diversity of this young academic field.a
--"M/C Reviews"

"As studies of the Internet and cyberculture begin to mature, it is a particularly important time for critical studies--critical of the subject matter, and critical of the emerging field itself. The consciously interdisciplinary approach of Critical Cyberculture Studies, and the depth and breadth of the contributions, make this an important foundational work for a new field of study. If only we had had a critical study of communication when the Gutenberg revolution was beginning!"
--Howard Rheingold, author of "The Virtual Community" and "Smart Mobs"

"This expansive book functions as both survey and call to action. Even as they map the shifting contours of an emergent field, the editors and contributors warn against the deadening force of disciplinarity. They encourage a nimble, flexible formulation of cyberculture studies, one that can keep pace with the rapid pulse of technological change and, more importantly, also address the injustices wrought of life in a networked age. Like the best traditions of cultural studies, they aim not just to describe our moment but to matter in the world."
--Tara McPherson, USC School of Cinema-Television

Starting in the early 1990s, journalists and scholars began responding to and trying to take account of newtechnologies and their impact on our lives. By the end of the decade, the full-fledged study of cyberculture had arrived. Today, there exists a large body of critical work on the subject, with cutting-edge studies probing beyond the mere existence of virtual communities and online identities to examine the social, cultural, and economic relationships that take place online.

Taking stock of the exciting work that is being done and positing what cyberculture's future might look like, Critical Cyberculture Studies brings together a diverse and multidisciplinary group of scholars from around the world to assess the state of the field. Opening with a historical overview of the field by its most prominent spokesperson, it goes on to highlight the interests and methodologies of a mobile and creative field, providing a much-needed how-to guide for those new to cyberstudies. The final two sections open up to explore issues of race, class, and gender and digital media's ties to capital and commerce--from the failure of dot-coms to free software and the hacking movement.

This flagship book is a must-read for anyone interested in the dynamic and increasingly crucial study of cyberculture and new technologies.

Globalization and technology are combining to change socio-economic relationships. The pace of change and uncertainty of the world of work - no job for life, zero-hours contracts, diminished pension rights and a growing delivery dependence on digital networks over human contact - are creating a profound unease that may be unprecedented in the Western world. If organizational patterns are not sufficiently adjusted and businesses continue as usual, we run the risk of alienating entire groups within society with many feeling 'left behind'. Using deliberately accessible language for students and the general reader, the authors draw upon socially innovative models of economic organization from the nineteenth century to present a model to master this new economy for the common good. The book illustrates, with practical examples, how digital networks can be leveraged and provides a common checklist to identify suitable conditions for organizations to flourish and provide the means to more effectively evaluate opportunities.

What impact does our relentless fixation on gadgets have on the struggle for new kinds of solidarity, political articulation and intelligence? In this groundbreaking study, Joss Hands explores the new political and social forces that are emerging in the age of social media. Gadget Consciousness examines the transformation of our consciousness as a historical political force in two senses: as individual consciousness - in terms of sentience and will - and also as class consciousness. Exploring a range of manifestations in the digital commons, he investigates what forms digital solidarity can take, and asks whether we can learn from the communisms of the past and how might solidarity be manifested in the future? Today, the ubiquity of networked gadgets offers exciting new opportunities for social and political change, but also significant dangers of alienation and stupefaction.

Friis and Crease capture Postphenomenology, a new field that has attracted attention among scholars engaged in technology studies. Contributors to this edited collection seek to analyze, clarify, and develop postphenomenological language and concepts, expand the work of Don Ihde, the field's founder, and scout into fields that Ihde never tackled. Many of the contributors to this collection had especially close ties to Ihde and have benefited from close work with him. This combined with the distinctive diversity of the contributors-18 people from 10 different countries-enables this volume to put on display the diversity of content and styles in this young movement.

Science and technology in former socialist Central and East European countries underwent a period of transformation in the last decade of the twentieth century. With respect to the past, this represents the restructuring of the old system. With respect to the twenty-first century, however, this serves as the turbulent starting phase in the transition to new national innovation systems. Based on the contributors' many years of research in this area, this book analyzes these processes in detail for fourteen countries, reveals common features and differences in the transitional phase, and infers the prospects for the development of science and technology in Eastern Europe in the framework of EU enlargement.

Examining Internet culture in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the US, this book analyzes videos which entertain both English and Chinese-speaking viewers to gain a better understanding of cultural similarities and differences. Each of the chapters in the volume studies streaming videos from YouTube and its Chinese counterparts, Todou and Youku, with the book using a combination of interpretative analysis of content, commentary, and ethnographic interviews. Employing a diverse range of examples, from Michael Jackson musical mash-ups of Cultural Revolution visuals, to short clips of Hitler ranting about twenty-first century issues with Chinese subtitles, this book goes on to explore the ways in which traditional beliefs regarding gender, romance, religion, and politics intersect. Looking at how these issues have changed over the years in response to new technologies and political economies, it also demonstrates how they engage in regional, transnational, and global dialogues. Comparing and incorporating the production of videos with traditional media, such as television and cinema, Internet Video Culture in China will be useful to students and scholars of Internet and digital anthropology, as well as Cultural Studies and Chinese Studies more generally.

The first systematic, comprehensive and critical English-language study of radio in China, this book documents a historical understanding of Chinese radio from the early twentieth century to the present. Covering both public matters and private lives, Radio and Social Transformation in China analyses a range of themes from healthcare, migration and education, to intimacy, family and friendship. Through a concentrated and thorough scrutiny of a variety of new genres and radio practices in post-Mao China, it also investigates the interaction between radio and social change, particularly in the era of economic reform. Building on the core theoretical concept of 'compressed modernity', each of the radio genres explored is shown to embody China's efforts to achieve modernity, while simultaneously exemplifying radio's capacity to manage the challenges that have arisen from the country's distinctive and perhaps unique process of modernization. Written in an engaging style, this book makes an important contribution to radio history internationally. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of broadcast media, radio and Communication Studies, as well as Chinese culture and society.

The setting for this book is the networked community. The treatment of the subject matter is broad and interdisciplinary, with contributions from computer science, sociology, design, human factors and communication technology.

The chapter contributors, drawn from across Europe and North America, offer a varied prospectus of commentary, critique, sociological enquiry, technological development and research findings, which provides a rounded account of the progressive intermingling of social and electronic networks.

The contributors discuss the ways in which the Internet affects both familial and social relationships, communal and civic involvement, social capital and work patterns and lifestyle. Civic intelligence is presented as a nascent concept from which future social networks of increased public advocacy, scrutiny and action may be sourced. Other reported developments include agent-based community systems to model and support communal memory and social knowledge.

The opening section provides a purview of the broad scene covered by the book, followed by discussions about the current state of connected communities. Following this there are case studies illustrating the different aspects of research, both sociological and technological, in this area. The final part reports the variety and the scope of technology-mediated human-to-human communication in a connected community setting today.

Menstruation provides one of the few shared bodily functions that most women will experience during their lifetimes. Yet, these experiences are anything but common. In the United States, for the better part of the twentieth century, menstruation went hand-in-glove with menstrual hygiene. But how and why did this occur? This book looks at the social history of menstrual hygiene by examining it as a technology. In doing so, the lens of technology provides a way to think about menstrual artifacts, how the artifacts are used, and how women gained the knowledge and skills to use them. As technological users, women developed great savvy in manipulating belts, pins, and pads, and using tampons to effectively mask their entire menstrual period. This masking is a form of passing, though it is not often thought of in that way. By using a technology of passing, a woman might pass temporarily as a non-bleeder, which could help her perform her work duties and not get fired or maintain social engagements like swimming at a summer party and not be marked as having her period. How women use technologies of passing, and the resulting politics of secrecy, are a part of women's history that has remained under wraps.

Humanity now stands at a crossroads between a world of unimaginable wonders and one of unprecedented terrors. The choices we make now will determine not only the shape of our future, but whether there will be, for us as a species, a future at all. But, if we are at such a crossroads, are we even properly aware of it? Governed by instincts rooted in the past, are we prepared to see what we need to see, to do what we need to do? As technology evolves, so must we; but how and in what direction? Are we unavoidably fated to trade liberty for security in ridding the world of terror and war? Humanity at the Crossroads attempts to answer all of these critical questions, while opening the dialogue for further debate. It arrives, in the process, at the startling conclusion that the very technology which threatens to destroy us, not merely its more favorable offshoots, is itself the catalyst for that better world we may yet hope to inhabit.

Integrating concepts from multiple theoretical disciplines and detailed analyses of the evolution of Internet-related innovations (including computer networking, the World Wide Web and the Linux open source operating system), this book develops foundations for a new theoretical and practical understanding of innovation. It covers topics ranging from fashion to history of art, and includes the most detailed analysis of the open source development model so far published.

This volume consists of a selection of scholarly essays from literature, philosophy and history on the conception of reality as understood by Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein. The nature of reality has been a long-debated issue among scientists and philosophers. Tagore (1861-1941) met Einstein (1879-1955) at the latter's house in Kaputh, Germany on 14 July 1930 and had a long conversation on this issue. This conversation has been widely quoted and discussed by scientists, philosophers and scholars from the literary world. The important question that Tagore and Einstein discussed was whether the world is a unity dependent on humanity, or the world is a reality independent of the human factor. Einstein believed that reality is independent of the mind and the human factor. On the other hand, Tagore adopted the opposite view. Nevertheless, both Einstein and Tagore claimed to be realists - their conceptions of reality were obviously fundamentally different. Where does the difference lie? Can it be harmonized at a deeper level? This volume brings together for the first time a gamut of views on this subject from eminent scholars. It presents some key reflections on reality, language, poetry, truth, science, personality, human sciences, virtue ethics, intelligibility and creativity. It will be useful to scholars and researchers of philosophy, literature, history and political studies, as also to those interested in Tagore.

Sinceits founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

In exploring the role of Catholic intellectuals in engaging science and technology in the twentieth century, this book initially provides a background context for this evolution by examining the Modernism crisis in the first chapter. In order to unpack the subsequent evolution, Thompson then concentrates in separate chapters on the distinctive contributions of four specific Catholic intellectuals, Jacques Maritain (1882 1973), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 1955), Bernard Lonergan (1904 1984), and Thomas Merton (1915 1968). All of these intellectuals experienced some degree of official restraint in their efforts but through their distinctive intellectual trajectories, they contributed to a different engagement of the Church with science and technology. In the final chapters, the book first reviews the changes within the institutional Church in the twentieth century toward science and technology. Finally, it then applies some key ideals of the four intellectuals to anneal and extend John Paul II's approach of "critical openness" to suggest how the Church can now engage science and technology."

On what basis can we challenge Artificial Intelligence (AI) - its infusion, investment, and implementation across the globe? This book answers this question by drawing on a range of critical approaches from the social sciences and humanities, including posthumanism, ethics and human values, surveillance studies, Black feminism, and other strategies for social and political resistance. The authors analyse timely topics, including bias and language processing, responsibility and machine learning, COVID-19 and AI in health technologies, bio-AI and nanotechnology, digital ethics, AI and the gig economy, representations of AI in literature and culture, and many more. This book is for those who are currently working in the field of AI critique and disruption as well as in AI development and programming. It is also for those who want to learn more about how to doubt, question, challenge, reject, reform and otherwise reprise AI as it been practiced and promoted.

Politics and religion have been major forces throughout history, and they still are as anyone who pays attention to current events can see. Understandably, the relationship between religion and politics calls for careful and ongoing scholarly exploration. At the same time, global centers of economic and military power are shifting from being concentrated in the West (Europe and North America) to areas in Asia, the world's largest landmass and home to the bulk of the world's population. Indeed, the twenty-first century is already shaping up to be the "Asian century". Perhaps not surprisingly, just as in the West, so in Asia, societies have been - and are still being - shaped by religious and political forces. Sacred Matters, Stately Concerns: Faith and Politics in Asia, Past and Present examines the complex and intertwined nature of "politics" and "religion" in diverse cultures within Asia, ranging from China and Japan to Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. By their very nature, the essays included here defy easy generalizations about the nature of religion in various societies, forcing us to rethink, and, one hopes, pushing us beyond staid assumptions. Certainly, these essays challenge prevailing views of national/political boundaries in Asia (and by extension elsewhere), and highlight the fact that the "separation of Church and State", a hallmark of the American political system, has rarely been observed in other places and times. Sacred Matters, Stately Concerns is suitable for use in a variety of courses on Asian history and politics as well as surveys of Asian culture and international relations and comparative/world religion and philosophy courses.

Successful strategies and principles for using information technology to transform regional and community economies exist, and they are presented here with clarity and insight in a way that is useful to both practitioners and researchers. Although the communities discussed here range far and wide, from those in Russia to Australia and to Kenya, any community can benefit from enhanced utilization of information and communication technologies. The ways in which technology can help improve economic, social, cultural, and political conditions are as numerous and various as the communities themselves. In Central Queensland, Australia, community leaders have brought in a high-tech expert advisory system to help them control weed infestation. New Zealand and Australia have pioneered telehealth, the exchange of health care information and the delivery of some services across great distances. In Russia, wiring a community was found to be about more than mere hardware and software; vital to the process was understanding how communities provide access to information technology, how authorities and volunteers can improve computer literacy among citizens, and how connectivity can be extended to greater numbers of people. In some areas of south Asia, nongovernmental organizations have teamed up with local governments to increase access, empowerment, and e-commerce opportunities. These are but a few of the ways this volume contributes to our knowledge base about the impact of technology on economic development.

Well into the twenty-first century, the United States remains one of the most highly religious industrial democracies on earth. Recent Gallup surveys suggest that 76 percent of Americans believe that the Bible is divinely inspired or the direct word of God. In Medieval America, Andrew M Koch and Paul H. Gates, Jr. offer a thoughtful examination of how this strong religious feeling, coupled with Christian doctrine, affects American political debates and collective practices and surveying the direct and indirect influence of religion and faith on American political culture. Koch and Gates open a more critical dialogue on the political influence of religion in American politics, showing that people's faith shapes their political views and the policies they support. Even with secular structures and processes, a democratic regime will reflect the belief patterns distributed among the public. Delving into a perspicacious analysis of the religious components in current practices in education, the treatment of political symbols, crime and punishment, the human body, and democratic politics, they contend that promoting and maintaining a free, open, and tolerant society requires the necessary limitation of religious influence in the domains of law and policy. Readers interested in religion and politics will find much to discuss in this incisive exploration of Christian beliefs and their impact on American political discourse.

The study of man today is divided in three ways that it should not be: between the humanities and the social sciences, between natural and metaphysical philosophy, and between faith and reason. This book bridges these three divides to build toward an integrated understanding of human being that begins with the revealed truths of Christian faith. Because its humanism draws upon diverse fields of art, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, and theology, the book should be of interest to scholars and students of all kinds. And because its humanism is all about us, the book should interest be of interest to anyone who happens to be human.

In recent years, Google s autonomous cars have logged thousands of miles on American highways and IBM s Watson trounced the best human Jeopardy players. Digital technologies with hardware, software, and networks at their core will in the near future diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors can, apply enormous data sets to transform retailing, and accomplish many tasks once considered uniquely human.

In The Second Machine Age MIT s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee two thinkers at the forefront of their field reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives.

Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Professions of all kinds from lawyers to truck drivers will be forever upended. Companies will be forced to transform or die. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar.

Drawing on years of research and up-to-the-minute trends, Brynjolfsson and McAfee identify the best strategies for survival and offer a new path to prosperity. These include revamping education so that it prepares people for the next economy instead of the last one, designing new collaborations that pair brute processing power with human ingenuity, and embracing policies that make sense in a radically transformed landscape.

A fundamentally optimistic book, The Second Machine Age will alter how we think about issues of technological, societal, and economic progress."

This book is an invitation to reflect on how a minority culture emerged from within "Third World" liberation movements. It considers not only the historical and cultural journey between Ethiopia and Jamaica, but also the psychological dynamics of subalterns between the East and the West. In this work, the author discusses the various beliefs and ideologies of the RastafarI movement in relation to Ethiopia, and challenges the RastafarI misogynistic attitude by rehabilitating the position of women within the movement through the figure of the Queen of Sheba.

Providing a global perspective on the development of American technology, Technology and American Society offers a historical narrative detailing major technological transformations over the last three centuries. With coverage devoted to both dramatic breakthroughs and incremental innovations, authors Gary Cross and Rick Szostak analyze the cause-and-effect relationship of technological change and its role in the constant drive for improvement and modernization. This fully-updated 3rd edition extends coverage of industry, home, office, agriculture, transport, constructions, and services into the twenty-first century, concluding with a new chapter on recent electronic and technological advances. Technology and American Society remains the ideal introduction to the myriad interactions of technological advancement with social, economic, cultural, and military change throughout the course of American history.

Instrumental Lives is an account of instrument making at the cutting edge of contemporary science and technology in a modern Indian scientific laboratory. For a period of roughly two-and-half decades, starting the late 1980s, a research group headed by CV Dharmadhikari in the physics department at the Savitribai Phule University, Pune, fabricated a range of scanning tunnelling and scanning force microscopes including the earliest such microscopes made in the country. Not only were these instruments made entirely in-house, research done using them was published in the world's leading peer reviewed journals, and students who made and trained on them went on to become top class scientists in premier institutions. The book uses qualitative research methods such as open-ended interviews, historical analysis and laboratory ethnography that are standard in Science and Technology Studies (STS), to present the micro-details of this instrument making enterprise, the counter-intuitive methods employed, and the unexpected material, human and intellectual resources that were mobilised in the process. It locates scientific research and innovation within the social, political and cultural context of a laboratory's physical location and asks important questions of the dominant narratives of innovation that remain fixated on quantitative metrics of publishing, patenting and generating commerce. The book is a story as much of the lives of instruments and their deaths as it is of the instrumentalities that make those lives possible and allow them to live on, even if with a rather precarious existence.

Unplugging Popular Culture showcases youth and young adult characters from film and television who defy the stereotype of the "digital native" who acts as an unquestioning devotee to screened technologies like the smartphone. In this study, unplugged tools, or non-digital tools, do not necessitate a ban on technology or a refusal to acknowledge its affordances but work instead to highlight the ability of fictional characters to move from high tech settings to low tech ones. By repurposing everyday materials, characters model the process of reusing and upcycling existing materials in innovative ways. In studying examples such as Pitch Perfect, Supernatural, Stranger Things, and Get Out, the book aims to make theories surrounding materiality apparent within popular culture and to help today's readers reconsider stereotypes of the young people they encounter on a daily basis.