In The Formula, Luke Dormehl takes readers inside the world of numbers, asking how we came to believe in the all-conquering power of algorithms; introducing the mathematicians, artificial intelligence experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who are shaping this brave new world, and ultimately asking how we survive in an era where numbers can sometimes seem to create as many problems as they solve.

This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, (...) things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent. (shrink)

Even in the increasingly individualized American medical system, advocates of 'personalized medicine' claim that healthcare isn't individualized enough. With the additional glamour of new biotechnologies such as genetic testing and pharmacogenetics behind it, 'Me Medicine'-- personalized or stratified medicine-- appears to its advocates as the inevitable and desirable way of the future. Drawing on an extensive evidence base, this book examines whether these claims are justified. It goes on to examine an alternative tradition rooted in communitarian ideals, that of the (...) common good as a goal in medicine. (shrink)

The Body Multiple is an extraordinary ethnography of an ordinary disease. Drawing on fieldwork in a Dutch university hospital, Annemarie Mol looks at the day-to-day diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis. A patient information leaflet might describe atherosclerosis as the gradual obstruction of the arteries, but in hospital practice this one medical condition appears to be many other things. From one moment, place, apparatus, specialty, or treatment, to the next, a slightly different “atherosclerosis” is being discussed, measured, observed, or stripped away. (...) This multiplicity does not imply fragmentation; instead, the disease is made to cohere through a range of tactics including transporting forms and files, making images, holding case conferences, and conducting doctor-patient conversations. The Body Multiple juxtaposes two distinct texts. Alongside Mol’s analysis of her ethnographic material—interviews with doctors and patients and observations of medical examinations, consultations, and operations—runs a parallel text in which she reflects on the relevant literature. Mol draws on medical anthropology, sociology, feminist theory, philosophy, and science and technology studies to reframe such issues as the disease-illness distinction, subject-object relations, boundaries, difference, situatedness, and ontology. In dialogue with one another, Mol’s two texts meditate on the multiplicity of reality-in-practice. Presenting philosophical reflections on the body and medical practice through vivid storytelling, The Body Multiple will be important to those in medical anthropology, philosophy, and the social study of science, technology, and medicine. (shrink)

Powers of Freedom, first published in 1999, offers a compelling approach to the analysis of political power which extends Foucault's hypotheses on governmentality in challenging ways. Nikolas Rose sets out the key characteristics of this approach to political power and analyses the government of conduct. He analyses the role of expertise, the politics of numbers, technologies of economic management and the political uses of space. He illuminates the relation of this approach to contemporary theories of 'risk society' and 'the sociology (...) of governance'. He argues that freedom is not the opposite of government but one of its key inventions and most significant resources. He also seeks some rapprochement between analyses of government and the concerns of critical sociology, cultural studies and Marxism, to establish a basis for the critique of power and its exercise. The book will be of interest to students and scholars in political theory, sociology, social policy and cultural studies. (shrink)

If nanotechnology lives up to its revolutionary promises, do we then need a ‘new’ type of ethics to guide this technological development? After distinguishing different senses in which ethics could be ‘new’, I focus on the phenomenon of TechnoMoral Change. Emerging technologies like nanotechnology have the potential to destabilize established moral norms and values. This is relevant because those norms and values are needed to discuss whether technological developments are desirable or not. I argue that to respond adequately to technological (...) changes in our lifeworld we cannot afford moral rigidity but should rather develop ‘moral resilience’. This requires that we stop framing the relation between technology and humans in terms of who governs over whom. Instead, we have to explore how both mutually shape one another. I conceptualize technology’s influence on morality in terms of de- and restabilization, identify several mechanisms of technomoral change, argue that such change usually doesn’t occur on the level of individual norms but on the level of moral constellations, and end with a plea for technomoral learning. (shrink)

We analyse solidarity as a mixture of social justice on the onehand and a set of cultural values and ascriptions on the otherhand. The latter defines the relevant sense of belonging togetherin a society. From a short analysis of the early stages of theDutch welfare state, we conclude that social responsibility wasoriginally based in religious and political associations. In theheyday of the welfare state, institutions such as sick funds,hospitals or nursing homes became financed collectively entirelyand became accessible to people of (...) all denominations. Solidaritywas transformed in a more general category, related to the statusof Dutch citizenship. Responsibility was transformed tocollective responsibility.Financial pressures on the Welfare State have resulted in adebate on choices in health care and in a number of systemreforms, so far relatively small. In the surrounding discourse,justice was linked to private responsibility. Both fromgovernment officials and from participants in the societaldebate, moralistic overtones could be heard concerning the threatof overburdening of the health care system by citizens.In this paper, we develop a concept of reflexive solidarity thatlinks elements of social justice to conceptualisations ofresponsibility that address policy makers and health careinstitutions as well as citizens, in their role of carereceivers. A short analysis of the phenomenon of personal budgetsin care services should prove that our concept of reflexivesolidarity is not empty. Linked to, but beyond the concept ofjustice, issues of social responsibility can be addressed withoutmoralistic overtones. (shrink)

This book provides an exciting and diverse philosophical exploration of the role of practice and practices in human activity. It contains original essays and critiques of this philosophical and sociological attempt to move beyond current problematic ways of thinking in the humanities and social sciences. It will be useful across many disciplines, including philosophy, sociology, science, cultural theory, history and anthropology.

This paper, which is based on an extensive analysis of the literature, gives a brief overview of the main ways in which solidarity has been employed in bioethical writings in the last two decades. As the vagueness of the term has been one of the main targets of critique, we propose a new approach to defining solidarity, identifying it primarily as a practice enacted at the interpersonal, communal, and contractual/legal levels. Our three-tier model of solidarity can also help to explain (...) the way in which crises of solidarity can occur, notably when formal solidaristic arrangements continue to exist despite ‘lower tiers’ of solidarity practices at inter-personal and communal levels having ‘broken away’. We hope that this contribution to the growing debate on the potential for the value of solidarity to help tackle issues in bioethics and beyond, will stimulate further discussion involving both conceptual and empirically informed perspectives. (shrink)

This article makes the political dimension of Gadamer's thought more explicit by examining the interplay of three concepts in his work: solidarity, friendship, and the other. Focusing primarily on certain post--"Truth and Method" writings, I argue that Gadamer's conception of solidarity has to do with historically contingent manifestations of bonds that reflect a civic life together of reciprocal co-perception. These bonds go beyond conscious recognition of observable similarities and differences and emerge from encounters among those who are, and remain, in (...) important ways other to each other. I make this case through an analysis of Gadamer's phenomenology of friendship and the crucial role of otherness in his accounts of both understanding and friendship. I suggest that Gadamer's political thought gives us a way of conceptualizing solidarity and otherness without making the other same or leaving the other completely other. (shrink)