Contested Categories: Life Sciences in Society

In the life sciences, knowledge is often produced in the restricted sites of laboratories, where humans, biological samples and instruments form complex networks of experiment and data. However, the resulting biomedical categories of human biological materials, fetuses, the body, disease or risk are never 'merely' technical. In grouping certain objects and substances together, social identities and meanings are created for them, affecting the ways in which they are viewed, valued and treated, thus rendering them subject to particular legal frameworks and standards for practice. Drawing on social science perspectives, Contested Categories presents a series of empirical studies that engage with the often shifting and day-to-day realities of life sciences categories as they circulate, inform practice and transform clinics, laboratories, policy arenas and public imaginations. In doing so, it shows how such categories remain contested and dynamic, and that the boundaries they create are subject to negotiation as well as re-configuration and re-stabilization processes. Organized around the themes of biological substances and objects, personhood and the genomic body and the creation and dispersion of knowledge, each of the volume's chapters reveals the elusive nature of fixity with regard to life science categories. With contributions from an international team of scholars, this book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the social, legal, policy and ethical implications of science and technology and the life sciences.