This book is the final installment of three volumes to grow out of Rabinow s and his students experiences with attempting to introduce an ethical and philosophical component into research in synthetic biology. The first book, co-authored with Gaymon Bennett, "Designing Human Practices" (2012), is a more or less descriptive analysis of the nitty-gritty of Rabinow & Co. s tenure at SynBERC, a large synthetic biology engineering center in Berkeley. The second, "Demands of the Day" (2013), co-authored with Anthony Stavrianakis, ...
Read More
This book is the final installment of three volumes to grow out of Rabinow s and his students experiences with attempting to introduce an ethical and philosophical component into research in synthetic biology. The first book, co-authored with Gaymon Bennett, "Designing Human Practices" (2012), is a more or less descriptive analysis of the nitty-gritty of Rabinow & Co. s tenure at SynBERC, a large synthetic biology engineering center in Berkeley. The second, "Demands of the Day" (2013), co-authored with Anthony Stavrianakis, did not focus directly on the day to day workings of SynBERC but rather on the implications that could be drawn out for anthropological inquiry. Briefly, the present work, also co-authored with Stavrianakis, "Designs on the Contemporary," probes deeper than "Demands" into the question of how pragmatic anthropological knowledge should be produced. Taking inspiration from Weber, Foucault and Dewey, among others, the authors reflect on the labor involved in giving form to the contemporary, always attentive to the importance of the ethical substance of the inquirer. Their proposition for how to practice anthropology in a contemporary manner tacks between philosophy and anthropology. It is a kind of philosophy understood as a persistent practice of anthropology and anthropology understood as a persistent practice of philosophy. The practice is philosophical in so far as it foregrounds various forms of truth and conduct as a problem and a check on what one is doing; it is anthropological in so far as it insists on form-giving as disciplined and engaged inquiry that is prior to the traditional focus on beliefs, symbols, and values. Such a practice, they argue, prepares us to engage the contemporary and give it form."
Read Less
Add this copy of Designs on the Contemporary: Anthropological Tests to cart. $31.94, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2014 by University of Chicago Press.
