The question of agency is a key issue in social theory and research. The discourse of human agency as an effect of social relations is deeply intertwined with the history of sociological thought. However, in most recent discussions the role of non-humans gains a substantial impact concerning agency. Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action asks: Are nonhumans active, do they have agency? And if so: how and in which different ways?

Consequently, Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action

• outlines a wide range of novel accounts that link human and non-human agency
• tries to understand social-technical, political and environmental networks as different forms of agency that produce discrete and identifiable entities
• asks how different types of (often conflicting) agency and agents are distinguished in practice, how they are maintained and how they interfere with each other.

By studying the substantial impact of the role of non-humans in connection with human relations, the book aims to advance the discourse on agency and investigates into the different possible modes of human and nonhuman interplay.

This book is essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, science and technology studies, social anthropology, animal studies, environmental studies and social theory.

Outlines how in modern societies hearing, health and sound technologies are entangled in multi-faceted ways. The book brings together, for the first time, historians, scholars from media studies, social sciences, cultural studies, acoustics and neuroscientists to show and discuss how modern technologies play a decisive role in the ways 'normal', enhanced or 'smart' hearing as well as hearing impairment have been configured and experienced. Addresses current hearing practices that become increasingly mediated by personalized hearing technologies and aids that engage with continuously changing sonic situations along advanced algorithms and intuitive apps.

Disrupting, questioning and altering the taken-for-granted 'cosmos' of everyday life, the experiences of illness challenge the different ways in which social normalcy is remembered, maintained and expected. This book explores the manifold experiences of life threatening, infectious or non-curable illnesses that trouble the practices and relations of human and social life. Challenging a mere deficit-model of illness, it examines how the cosmopolitics of illness require and initiate an ethos that cares for difference and diversity. Eventful Bodies presents rich qualitative and ethnographic data alongside print and on-line media sources from Germany and North America, exploring case studies involving Alzheimer's disease, stroke and the global threat of infectious diseases such as SARS. The book engages with debates in cosmopolitics and exposes the agency of those overlooked by contemporary discourses of cosmopolitanism, thus developing a new theory of illness and delineating a novel empirical agenda and conceptual space for sociological and anthropological research. A rigorous examination of the changes wrought in the social world by illness and the implications of this for social and political theory, Eventful Bodies will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, social and political theorists, geographers and scholars of science and technology studies, with interests in medical sociology, health, illness and the body.

New Technologies and Emerging Spaces of Care provides the latest practice-oriented qualitative research and innovative conceptual discussions of how health and health care systems are currently dealing with complex transformations and varied reforms. Exploring and analysing the social and cultural impact of new technologies, this book examines the societal relevance of new technologies of care and the manner in which technological innovations configure and reconfigure institutionalized spaces of care. It addresses issues of social control, accountability, surveillance and disciplining; diverging patterns of inclusion and exclusion; new relations and subjectivities of patients and care givers; the relation between private and public forms of care and the practices and concerns generated by new technologies at the individual as well as the societal level. Presenting sophisticated theoretical discussions and detailed empirical case studies, New Technologies and Emerging Spaces of Care analyses, compares and evaluates on a transnational level the role and impact of (assistive) technologies for elderly and disabled people on the concepts and practices of spaces of care. A critical understanding of contemporary practices of care, that cuts through the growing conceptual barriers between social and medical models of care studies, this book will be of interest to those interested in new technologies, health care and social space of care. Specifically, it will appeal to scholars of science and technology studies, medical sociology and the sociology of the body, social inequality and exclusion, health and care studies, gerontology and disability studies.

Disrupting, questioning and altering the taken-for-granted 'cosmos' of everyday life, the experiences of illness challenge the different ways in which social normalcy is remembered, maintained and expected. This book explores the manifold experiences of life threatening, infectious or non-curable illnesses that trouble the practices and relations of human and social life. Challenging a mere deficit-model of illness, it examines how the cosmopolitics of illness require and initiate an ethos that cares for difference and diversity. Eventful Bodies presents rich qualitative and ethnographic data alongside print and on-line media sources from Germany and North America, exploring case studies involving Alzheimer's disease, stroke and the global threat of infectious diseases such as SARS. The book engages with debates in cosmopolitics and exposes the agency of those overlooked by contemporary discourses of cosmopolitanism, thus developing a new theory of illness and delineating a novel empirical agenda and conceptual space for sociological and anthropological research. A rigorous examination of the changes wrought in the social world by illness and the implications of this for social and political theory, Eventful Bodies will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists, social and political theorists, geographers and scholars of science and technology studies, with interests in medical sociology, health, illness and the body.

This text is a critical and empirically-based introduction to disability studies. It offers a comprehensive, book-length analysis of disability through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and presents a practice-oriented discussion of how bodies, senses and things are linked in everyday life and configure "enabling" and "disabling" scenarios. Relevant to a broad spectrum of medical practitioners and practicing social service workers, the book will also be essential reading in the fields of disability studies, sociology of the body/senses, medical sociology and STS.

This text is a critical and empirically-based introduction to disability studies. It offers a comprehensive, book-length analysis of disability through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS), and presents a practice-oriented discussion of how bodies, senses and things are linked in everyday life and configure "enabling" and "disabling" scenarios. Relevant to a broad spectrum of medical practitioners and practicing social service workers, the book will also be essential reading in the fields of disability studies, sociology of the body/senses, medical sociology and STS.

The question of agency is a key issue in social theory and research. The discourse of human agency as an effect of social relations is deeply intertwined with the history of sociological thought. However, in most recent discussions the role of non-humans gains a substantial impact concerning agency. Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action asks: Are nonhumans active, do they have agency? And if so: how and in which different ways? Consequently, Agency without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action outlines a wide range of novel accounts that link human and non-human agency tries to understand social-technical, political and environmental networks as different forms of agency that produce discrete and identifiable entities asks how different types of (often conflicting) agency and agents are distinguished in practice, how they are maintained and how they interfere with each other. By studying the substantial impact of the role of non-humans in connection with human relations, the book aims to advance the discourse on agency and investigates into the different possible modes of human and nonhuman interplay. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of sociology, science and technology studies, social anthropology, animal studies, environmental studies and social theory.

New Technologies and Emerging Spaces of Care provides the latest practice-oriented qualitative research and innovative conceptual discussions of how health and health care systems are currently dealing with complex transformations and varied reforms. Exploring and analysing the social and cultural impact of new technologies, this book examines the societal relevance of new technologies of care and the manner in which technological innovations configure and reconfigure institutionalized spaces of care. It addresses issues of social control, accountability, surveillance and disciplining; diverging patterns of inclusion and exclusion; new relations and subjectivities of patients and care givers; the relation between private and public forms of care and the practices and concerns generated by new technologies at the individual as well as the societal level. Presenting sophisticated theoretical discussions and detailed empirical case studies, New Technologies and Emerging Spaces of Care analyses, compares and evaluates on a transnational level the role and impact of (assistive) technologies for elderly and disabled people on the concepts and practices of spaces of care. A critical understanding of contemporary practices of care, that cuts through the growing conceptual barriers between social and medical models of care studies, this book will be of interest to those interested in new technologies, health care and social space of care. Specifically, it will appeal to scholars of science and technology studies, medical sociology and the sociology of the body, social inequality and exclusion, health and care studies, gerontology and disability studies.

Cutting-edge application of the insights of Disability Studies to the German cultural field. Established, commissioned, and edited by the Department of German at the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh German Yearbook encourages and disseminates lively and open discussion of themes pertinent to German Studies. No other yearbook covers the entire field while addressing a focused theme in each issue. Volume 4 focuses on disability in German literature, film, and theater. Disability Studies is part of the broader discussion of difference and "otherness," of the politics of identity, human rights, ethics, and discrimination. It retrieves disabled figures from literature, film, and theater and discusses them vis-a-vis "normalcy." Recently, Disability Studies has explored the binary of "able" and "disabled," strategies of exclusion, and the marginalization and suffering of the disabled body under social and medical structures of control. It is now entering a phase of positive reflection addressing the ontological politics of disability. Accordingly, this volume examines cultural representations of disability that raise questions about "the humane gaze" and posits disability as historically central to discussions of humanity, modernity, and social and moral behavior in German-language literature, film, and theater. Points of focus include blindness, physical deformity, injury, illness, and euthanasia. Contributors: Martin Brady, Pauline Eyre, Corinna Hager, Karin Harrasser, Urte Helduser, Eleoma Joshua, Susanne C. Knittel, Anna Kornbrodt, Siegfried Saerberg, Rosa Schneider. Eleoma Joshua is Lecturer in German Studies at the University of Edinburgh,UK. Michael Schillmeier lectures in the Department of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich.