scholarly journals Making Sense of Community and Identity in Twenty-First Century Technoscience

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Karen Kastenhofer ◽  
Susan Molyneux-Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
First Century ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThis introductory chapter begins with the empirical example of synthetic biology, a case that has challenged our own thinking, provoking us to re-address the concepts of scientific ‘community’ and ‘identity’ in contemporary technoscience. The chapter then moves on to a delineation of the conceptualisations of community and identity in past sociologies of science, highlighting open questions, promising avenues and potential shortcomings in explaining contemporary conditions. Following this, the individual contributions to this volume are presented, including their analyses on community and identity constellations and the related effects on the contemporary technosciences as institutions, practices and living spaces. This is achieved with a focus on common themes that come to the fore from the various contributions. In a final discussion, we take stock of our attempt at re-addressing community and identity in contemporary technoscientific contexts and discuss where this has brought us; which ambiguities could not be resolved and which questions seem promising starting points for further conceptual and empirical endeavour.

Knowledge First

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter ◽  
Emma C. Gordon ◽  
Benjamin W. Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual

In this introductory chapter, the volume’s editors provide a theoretical background to the volume’s topic and a brief overview of the papers included. The chapter is divided into five parts: Section 1 explains the main contours of the knowledge-first approach, as it was initially advanced by Timothy Williamson in Knowledge and its Limits. In Sections 2–3, some of the key philosophical motivations for the knowledge-first approach are reviewed, and several key contemporary research themes associated with this approach in epistemology, the philosophy of mind and elsewhere are outlined and briefly discussed. The volume’s papers are divided into two broad categories: foundational issues and applications and new directions. Section 4 discusses briefly the scope and aim of the volume as the editors have conceived it, and Section 5 offers an overview of each of the individual contributions in the volume.

Introduction

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jed Z. Buchwald ◽  
Mordechai Feingold
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Church History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Book Of Revelation ◽  
Fluid Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Natural Philosophers

This introductory chapter discusses Isaac Newton’s immersion in ancient prophecies, Church history, and alchemy. These investigations raise several questions: what links his interest in such matters to his investigations in optics, mechanics, and mathematics? Was Newton in his alchemical laboratory the same Newton who analyzed the passage of light through a prism and who measured the behavior of bodies falling through fluid media? What did the Newton who interpreted the Book of Revelation have to do with the man who wrote the Principia Mathematica? And how does the Newton who pored over ancient texts square with the author of the Opticks? The Newton that is the subject of this book differs in striking ways from any scientist of the twenty-first century. But he differed as well from his contemporary natural philosophers, theologians, and chronologers. The book investigates the origin of this difference and then uses it to produce a new understanding of Newton’s worldview and its historical context.

Introduction: The Bollywood Eclipse

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neelam Sidhar Wright
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Film Production ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
Aesthetic Style ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Function ◽  
Film Language

This book examines changes in Bollywood's film production during the twenty-first century, and particularly after its economic liberalisation, giving rise to a ‘New Bollywood’. It shows how the Indian cinema has acquired evidently postmodern qualities and explains what postmodernism means in the context of Bollywood cinema. It also considers what postmodernism tells us about the change and function of Bollywood film language after the twenty-first century. The book describes Bollywood's ‘postmodern turn’ as a form of transformation that reworks or revisits previous aesthetic trends in order to produce a radically different aesthetic. ‘New Bollywood’ refers to contemporary films characterised by a strong postmodern aesthetic style which was not as present in the 1990s. This introductory chapter discusses the meaning of ‘contemporary Bollywood’, postmodernism as a means of reading and interpreting films, and the structure of the book.

Introduction

Saw ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 7-12
Author(s):  
Benjamin Poole
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
First Century ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
Twenty First Century

This introductory chapter provides an overview of SAW (2004). SAW is a horror film that is entirely representative of the era that created it: the early twenty-first century witnessed a threatened America whose national confidence was shattered, and shady Middle Eastern wars played out in abject images of torture and suffering. Like the aeons of horror tales that precede it, the film is an essay in morality as well as mortality; its antagonist cleaves to a logical, if bloody moral code, while no victim is wholly without guilt. As with all of the best horror, SAW is interested in the spiritual and physical potential of the human body and soul. This aspect of gratification is abundantly evident in the gross extremities of SAW's survival horror. The particular focus is sadism and body trauma, which the film details with surgical precision.

Introduction

City, State ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Ran Hirschl
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
First Century ◽  
Constitutional Order ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The City ◽  
Spatial Governance

This introductory chapter illustrates that, in many settings worldwide, hardwired constitutional arrangements reflect outdated concepts of spatial governance featuring constitutional division of competences adopted in a pre-megacity era and increasingly detached from twenty-first-century realities. Consequently, cities do not exist constitutionally. And with few exceptions, cities remain subjugated by a Westphalian constitutional order and by the state’s innate inclination to maintain jurisdictional primacy over its territory. National constitutions’ entrenched nature and innately statist outlook render the city systemically weak and to a large degree underrepresented. As extensive urbanization marches on, an ever-widening gap emerges between what is expected of a modern metropolis, and what cities can actually deliver in the absence of adequate standing, representation, taxation powers, or robust policy-making authority.

On the limits of limits

First Monday ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Pargman
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Discussion Paper ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

This discussion paper outlines the connection between the perceived urgency of environmental and resource challenges that humanity is facing during the twenty-first century and the individual researcher’s response within the emerging “Computing within Limits” community. What is the relationship between our beliefs as individuals and as researchers and the specific issues we chose to study? Furthermore, is there a relationship between skills and topics we happen to be expert in and the subsequent future scenarios we plan for and deem to be more likely to happen?

Black and More than Black

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Leader-Picone
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Racial Identity ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Structural Racism ◽  
Black Artists ◽  
Black Arts ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Individual

This book analyzes twenty-first century African American fiction through the proliferation of post categories that arose in the new millennium. These post categories—post-black, post-racialism, post-Soul—articulate a shift away from the racial aesthetics associated with the Black Arts Movement and argue for the individual agency of Black artists over the meaning of racial identity in their work. Analyzing key works by Colson Whitehead, Alice Randall, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Paul Beatty, Jesmyn Ward, and Kiese Laymon, this book argues that twenty-first century African American fiction highlights the push and pull between claims of post-civil rights progress and the recognition of the entrenchment of structural racism. The book contextualizes this shift through the rise of, and presidency of, Barack Obama and the revision of Du Boisian double consciousness. It examines Obama through an analysis of the discourse surrounding his rise, Obama’s own writings, and his appearance as a character. The book concludes that while the claims of progress associated with Barack Obama’s presidency and the post era categories to which it was connected were overly optimistic, they represent a major shift towards an individualistic conception of racial identity that continues to resist claims of responsibility imposed on Black artists.

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