Culturing Life

Author : Hannah Landecker
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2010-03-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 0674023285

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Culturing Life by Hannah Landecker Pdf

How did cells make the journey, one we take so much for granted, from their origin in living bodies to something that can be grown and manipulated on artificial media in the laboratory, a substantial biomass living outside a human body, plant, or animal? This is the question at the heart of Hannah Landecker's book. She shows how cell culture changed the way we think about such central questions of the human condition as individuality, hybridity, and even immortality and asks what it means that we can remove cells from the spatial and temporal constraints of the body and "harness them to human intention." Rather than focus on single discrete biotechnologies and their stories--embryonic stem cells, transgenic animals--Landecker documents and explores the wider genre of technique behind artificial forms of cellular life. She traces the lab culture common to all those stories, asking where it came from and what it means to our understanding of life, technology, and the increasingly blurry boundary between them. The technical culture of cells has transformed the meaning of the term "biological," as life becomes disembodied, distributed widely in space and time. Once we have a more specific grasp on how altering biology changes what it is to be biological, Landecker argues, we may be more prepared to answer the social questions that biotechnology is raising.

Author : Benjamin Woo
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2018-03-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780773552968

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Getting a Life by Benjamin Woo Pdf

"Comic book superheroes, fantasy kingdoms, and futuristic starships have become inescapable features of today's pop-culture landscape, and the people we used to deride as "nerds" or "geeks" have ridden their popularity and visibility to mainstream recognition. It seems it's finally hip to be square. Yet these conventionalized representations of geek culture typically ignore the real people who have invested time and resources to make it what it is. Getting a Life recentres our understanding of geek culture on the everyday lives of its participants, drawing on fieldwork in comic book shops, game stores, and conventions, including in-depth interviews with ordinary members of the overlapping communities of fans and enthusiasts. Benjamin Woo shows how geek culture is a set of interconnected social practices that are associated with popular media. He argues that typical depictions of mass-mediated entertainment as something that isolates and pacifies its audiences are flawed because they do not account for the conversations, relationships, communities, and identities that are created by engaging with the products of mass culture. Getting a Life combines engaging interview material with lucid interpretation and a clear, interdisciplinary framework. The volume is both an accessible introduction to this contemporary subculture and an exploration of the ethical possibilities of a life lived with media.

Author : Stefan Helmreich
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 334 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2000-08-29
Category : Computers
ISBN : 9780520208001

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Silicon Second Nature by Stefan Helmreich Pdf

Looks at the emerging field of artificial life - the product of imagination - a mix of biology, mythology and technology.

Author : David Inglis
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 180 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2005
Category : Culture
ISBN : 0415319269

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Culture and Everyday Life by David Inglis Pdf

This lively and accessible new book reconsiders the different views as to what 'culture' is, how it operates, and how it relates to other aspects of the human (and non-human) world.

Author : Hannah Landecker
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 302 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2010-03-30
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780674265271

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Culturing Life by Hannah Landecker Pdf

How did cells make the journey, one we take so much for granted, from their origin in living bodies to something that can be grown and manipulated on artificial media in the laboratory, a substantial biomass living outside a human body, plant, or animal? This is the question at the heart of Hannah Landecker's book. She shows how cell culture changed the way we think about such central questions of the human condition as individuality, hybridity, and even immortality and asks what it means that we can remove cells from the spatial and temporal constraints of the body and "harness them to human intention." Rather than focus on single discrete biotechnologies and their stories--embryonic stem cells, transgenic animals--Landecker documents and explores the wider genre of technique behind artificial forms of cellular life. She traces the lab culture common to all those stories, asking where it came from and what it means to our understanding of life, technology, and the increasingly blurry boundary between them. The technical culture of cells has transformed the meaning of the term "biological," as life becomes disembodied, distributed widely in space and time. Once we have a more specific grasp on how altering biology changes what it is to be biological, Landecker argues, we may be more prepared to answer the social questions that biotechnology is raising.

Author : Andy Bennett
Publisher : SAGE
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2005-07-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781446225875

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Culture and Everyday Life by Andy Bennett Pdf

′Bennett provides a well organized, very readable and interesting discussion of a number of significant everyday cultural forms and I am confident student readers will find the book very valuable′ - Barry Smart, University of Portsmouth Culture and Everyday Life provides students with a comprehensive overview of theoretical models, issues and examples of contemporary cultural practice. Bennett begins by summarising and situating - in everyday settings - the key theoretical models applied in the study of existing cultural practices. This entails a systematic study of how academic thinking about mass culture has changed, from critical accounts of early mass cultural theorists to radical postmodernist critiques of mass cultural accounts and to ′the cultural turn′, which explored how various social identities are culturally constructed. Following this are themed chapters that cover a particular aspect of late modern culture, such as media, music, fashion, tourism and counter-cultural ideologies and movements. In each case a comprehensive literature review is provided and its theoretical and empirical relevance to our understanding of the relationship between culture and everyday life in contemporary society is explained. Lucid, meticulous and illustrated with a host of examples, this is a superb text for teaching and research in the Sociology of Culture and Cultural Studies.

Author : Michael Carrithers
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 195 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2009-06-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781845459246

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Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life by Michael Carrithers Pdf

Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.

Author : Micki McGee
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 305 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2005-09-08
Category : Self-Help
ISBN : 9780195171242

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Self-Help, Inc. by Micki McGee Pdf

Why doesn't self-help help? Micki McGee explores the demand for self-help & what it tells us about ourselves.

Author : Ute Edda Hammer,Tonina Oliver,Frank Schauhoff
Publisher : Konemann
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Travel
ISBN : 3829025971

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Majorca by Ute Edda Hammer,Tonina Oliver,Frank Schauhoff Pdf

Author : Shirley Fedorak
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
Page : 184 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2009-01-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1442601248

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Pop Culture by Shirley Fedorak Pdf

"This text is important for any introductory anthropology course, particularly in conveying to students the relevance of anthropology by engaging with the very aspects of popular culture that are significant in their everyday lives." - Kristin L. Dowell, University of Oklahoma

Author : Guy Branum
Publisher : Atria Books
Page : 4 pages
File Size : 42,6 Mb
Release : 2019-06-18
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781501170232

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My Life as a Goddess by Guy Branum Pdf

“Smart, fast, clever, and funny (As f*ck!)” (Tiffany Haddish), this collection of side-splitting and illuminating essays by the popular stand-up comedian, alum of Chelsea Lately and The Mindy Project, and host of truTV’s Talk Show the Game Show is perfect for fans of the New York Times bestsellers Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby. From a young age, Guy Branum always felt as if he were on the outside looking in. From a stiflingly boring farm town, he couldn’t relate to his neighbors. While other boys played outside, he stayed indoors reading Greek mythology. And being gay and overweight, he got used to diminishing himself. But little by little, he started learning from all the sad, strange, lonely outcasts in history who had come before him, and he started to feel hope. In this “singular, genuinely ballsy, and essential” (Billy Eichner) collection of personal essays, Guy talks about finding a sense of belonging at Berkeley—and stirring up controversy in a newspaper column that led to a run‑in with the Secret Service. He recounts the pitfalls of being typecast as the “Sassy Gay Friend,” and how, after taking a wrong turn in life (i.e. law school), he found stand‑up comedy and artistic freedom. He analyzes society’s calculated deprivation of personhood from fat people, and how, though it’s taken him a while to accept who he is, he has learned that with a little patience and a lot of humor, self-acceptance is possible. “Keenly observant and intelligent, Branum’s book not only offers uproarious insights into walking paths less traveled, but also into what self-acceptance means in a world still woefully intolerant of difference” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). My Life as a Goddess is an unforgettable and deeply moving book by one of today’s most endearing and galvanizing voices in comedy.

Author : Jonas Frykman,Orvar Löfgren
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 340 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 1987
Category : Middle class
ISBN : 0813512395

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Culture Builders by Jonas Frykman,Orvar Löfgren Pdf

"Explains brilliantly the structures and processes of middle-class culture in historical perspective."--Robert Nye, Rutgers University " This] illuminating study of the Swedish middle class around the turn of the century . . . is one welcome sign that bourgeois, too, are once again recognized as parts of society worth studying . . . to be understood rather than to be savaged. Culture Builders is a welcome sign of yet another development: the ease with which historical studies may be integrated with neighboring disciplines."--Journal of Modern History "The authors take an impressively broad intellectual perspective. . . . The everyday routines of bourgeoisie, peasantry, and working class are dramatically portrayed through a skillful weaving together of excerpts from ethnological archives, schoolbooks, memoirs, novels, and etiquette manuals . . . provides insight into the sociocultural complexities, conflicts, and contradictions that are ignored in widely held national stereotypes."--American Anthropologist "Unites historical and ethnological approaches so as to present a way of life that will be of interest not only to scholars of Scandinavia but to historians, sociologists, and everyone trying to describe and interpret the bourgeois Western culture during the nineteenth century."--Ethnos Jonas Frykman and Orvar Lofgren teach in the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Lund, Sweden.

Author : Robert Aldrich
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2010
Category : Gays
ISBN : 0500287074

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Gay Life and Culture by Robert Aldrich Pdf

Originally published: London: Thames & Hudson Ltd., 2006.

Author : Robert Spitzer
Publisher : Ignatius Press
Page : 356 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2009-10-16
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781681492278

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Healing the Culture by Robert Spitzer Pdf

Father Spitzer, President of Gonzaga University, has been using the principles in this book over the last eight years to educate people of all backgrounds in the philosophy of the pro-life movement. The tremendous positive response he has received inspired him to start the Life Principles Institute. This book is one of the key resources used for this program. This work effectively draws out the connections between personal attitudes toward happiness and the meaning of life, and the larger cultural issues such as freedom and human rights. Relying on the wisdom of the ages and respecting the human persons' unique capacity for rational analysis, this work offers definitions of the key cultural terms affecting life issues, including Happiness, Success, Love, Suffering, Quality of Life, Ethics, Freedom, Personhood, Human Rights and the Common Good.

Author : David E. Shi
Publisher : University of Georgia Press
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780820329758

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The Simple Life by David E. Shi Pdf

Looking across more than three centuries of want and prosperity, war and peace, Shi introduces a rich cast of practitioners and proponents of the simple life, among them Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Jane Addams, Scott and Helen Nearing, and Jimmy Carter.