Unit name | Geographies of Health, Science and Technology |
---|---|
Unit code | GEOGM0040 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | M/7 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | . Fannin |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None. |
Co-requisites |
None. |
School/department | School of Geographical Sciences |
Faculty | Faculty of Science |
This unit introduces geographical work on science and technology studies, with a specific emphasis on the relevance of this work to the study of health and medicine. It will provide an introduction to the field of STS and in particular how feminist, postcolonial, actor-network, new materialism and other theoretical currents shape social science and humanities approaches to scientific knowledge, the biopolitics of health and medicine, the role of experimentation in scientific practice, and the social and ethical questions raised by technological innovation. Readings span include scholarship in queer, postcolonial and feminist theory, biology and technoscience criticism, and ethnographic inquiry.
This unit aims:
At the completion of this unit, students will be able to:
Ten 2-hour seminars
Formative:
Each student will present in one seminar on that seminar’s assigned readings for about fifteen minutes in length. Each presentation will summarise central themes in the readings for that week and pose questions for discussion. A copy of the presentation will be distributed to the class at the beginning of the two-hour seminar, and feedback will be given to the students within one week of their presentation. (ILOs 1, 2, and 3).
Summative:
One 4,500-word essay (100% of the unit mark) examining how the concepts and methods of science and technology studies can be critically applied to the student’s selected research topic. (ILOs 2, 3, and 4)
Essential
Foucault, Michel. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics (Palgrave-Macmillan)
Haraway, Donna (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene Duke UP
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Murphy, Michelle. (2017) The Economization of Life Duke UP
Recommended
Cooper, Melinda. (2008) Life as Surplus (Durham: Duke University Press)
Franklin, Sarah (2013) Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship Duke UP
Hayden, Cory (2003) When Nature Goes Public: the making and unmaking of bioprospecting in Mexico Princeton: Princeton University Press
Rajan, Kaushik Sunder (2006) Biocapital: the Constitution of Postgenomic Life Durham: Duke University Press
Further reading
Jasanoff, Sheila. (2005) Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
Office of Technology Assessment (1989) Patenting Life, http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/8924.pdf
Suchman, Lucy (2007) Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Action Cambridge UP
Verran, Helen. (2001) Science and an African Logic Chicago UP
There is no core text book for this unit. Instead students will be required to read a selection of journal articles, book chapters and books as specified on the reading list circulated at the start of the course.