We, Other Utopians

2021-12-30 Social Science

Author : Eva Šlesingerová
Release : 2021-12-30
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 401/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis We, Other Utopians by : Eva Šlesingerová

Download or read book We, Other Utopians written by Eva Šlesingerová. This book was released on 2021-12-30. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We, Other Utopians is the first book to analyze the topics of genome editing/recombinant DNA on the basis of ethnographic research in the post-communist context. The book focuses on the topics of human DNA editing and genome repair on two levels. First, inspired by texts analyzing the concept of life and the body in general, it conceptually and analytically works with various approaches to engineered life and embodiments from the perspective of anthropology, sociology, and science and technology studies. Second, it presents an analysis of artificial life, and biotechnological embodiments on concrete technologies – genome editing, recombinant DNA, and biological computing. The book explores the theme of genome editing based on ethnographic research conducted at a biochemical laboratory in the Czech Republic. The fieldwork was carried out from 2017 to 2019, mainly in a lab focusing on DNA damages and genomic risk of complex diseases or genetic vulnerabilities like breast cancer, infertility, and ageing. Recombinant DNA is understood here as the exchange of DNA strands to produce and design new nucleotide sequence arrangements to heal or enhance human bodies and health in the future. The book analyzes various economies of hope, hype, expectations, politics, and poetics of false promises and better or worse predictions from the point of view of sociology, anthropology, and science and technology studies.

The Last Utopians

2020-04-28 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Michael Robertson
Release : 2020-04-28
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 869/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Last Utopians by : Michael Robertson

Download or read book The Last Utopians written by Michael Robertson. This book was released on 2020-04-28. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Last Utopians delves into the biographies of four key figures--Edward Bellamy, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman--who lived during an extraordinary period of literary and social experimentation. The publication of Bellamy's Looking Backward in 1888 opened the floodgates of an unprecedented wave of utopian writing. Morris, the Arts and Crafts pioneer, was a committed socialist whose News from Nowhere envisions a workers' Arcadia. Carpenter boldly argued that homosexuals constitute a utopian vanguard. Gilman, a women's rights activist and the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote numerous utopian fictions, including Herland, a visionary tale of an all-female society. These writers, Robertson shows, shared a belief in radical equality, imagining an end to class and gender hierarchies and envisioning new forms of familial and romantic relationships. They held liberal religious beliefs about a universal spirit uniting humanity. They believed in social transformation through nonviolent means and were committed to living a simple life rooted in a restored natural world. And their legacy remains with us today, as Robertson describes in entertaining firsthand accounts of contemporary utopianism, ranging from Occupy Wall Street to a Radical Faerie retreat.

The Utopians

2021-06-10 Biography & Autobiography

Author : Anna Neima
Release : 2021-06-10
Genre : Biography & Autobiography
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 084/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Utopians by : Anna Neima

Download or read book The Utopians written by Anna Neima. This book was released on 2021-06-10. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Fascinating and richly documented . . . Few books manage to be so informative and so entertaining.' – Sunday Times 'Thanks to Neima’s rigorous research, each chapter offers something new.' – Spectator 'Neima ranges with impressive confidence across the world'. – Literary Review Santiniketan-Sriniketan in India, Dartington Hall in England, Atarashiki Mura in Japan, the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in France, the Bruderhof in Germany and Trabuco College in America: six experimental communities established in the aftermath of the First World War, each aiming to change the world. The Utopians is an absorbing and vivid account of these collectives and their charismatic leaders and reveals them to be full of eccentric characters, outlandish lifestyles and unchecked idealism. Dismissed and even mocked in their time, yet, a century later, their influence still resonates in progressive education, environmentalism, medical research and mindfulness training. Without such inspirational experiments in how to live, post-war society would have been a poorer place.

Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations

2016-09-06 Technology & Engineering

Author : Nicholas Carr
Release : 2016-09-06
Genre : Technology & Engineering
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 550/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations by : Nicholas Carr

Download or read book Utopia Is Creepy: And Other Provocations written by Nicholas Carr. This book was released on 2016-09-06. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A freewheeling, sharp-shooting indictment of a tech-besotted culture. With razor wit, Nicholas Carr cuts through Silicon Valley’s unsettlingly cheery vision of the technological future to ask a hard question: Have we been seduced by a lie? Gathering a decade’s worth of posts from his blog, Rough Type, as well as his seminal essays, Utopia Is Creepy is “Carr’s best hits for those who missed the last decade of his stream of thoughtful commentary about our love affair with technology and its effect on our relationships” (Richard Cytowic, New York Journal of Books). Carr draws on artists ranging from Walt Whitman to the Clash, while weaving in the latest findings from science and sociology. Carr’s favorite targets are those zealots who believe so fervently in computers and data that they abandon common sense. Cheap digital tools do not make us all the next Fellini or Dylan. Social networks, diverting as they may be, are not vehicles for self-enlightenment. And “likes” and retweets are not going to elevate political discourse. Utopia Is Creepy compels us to question the technological momentum that has trapped us in its flow. “Resistance is never futile,” argues Carr, and this book delivers the proof.

After Utopia

2020-04-07 Philosophy

Author : Judith N. Shklar
Release : 2020-04-07
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 866/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis After Utopia by : Judith N. Shklar

Download or read book After Utopia written by Judith N. Shklar. This book was released on 2020-04-07. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A political philosophy classic from one of the foremost political thinkers of the twentieth century After Utopia was Judith Shklar’s first book, a harbinger of her renowned career in political philosophy. Throughout the many changes in political thought during the last half century, this important work has withstood the test of time. In After Utopia, Shklar explores the decline of political philosophy, from Enlightenment optimism to modern cultural despair, and she offers a critical, creative analysis of this downward trend. She looks at Romantic and Christian social thought, and she shows that while the present political fatalism may be unavoidable, the prophets of despair have failed to explain the world they so dislike, leaving the possibility of a new and vigorous political philosophy. With a foreword by Samuel Moyn, examining After Utopia’s continued relevance, this current edition introduces a remarkable synthesis of ideas to a new generation of readers.

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