Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices

Global Pharmaceuticals: Ethics, Markets, Practices . Adriana Petryna, Lakoff Andrew, and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 301 pp.     

Playing God,Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement

The question of enhancement occupies a prominent place not only in current bioethical debates but also in wider public discussions about our human future. In all of these, the problem of enhancement is usually articulated via two sets of questions: moral questions over its permissibility, extent and direction; and technical questions over the feasibility of different forms of regenerative and synthetic alterations to human bodies and minds. This article argues that none of the dominant positions on enhancement within the field of bioethics is entirely satisfactory due to the limited, monadic, pre-technological and non-cultural conception of the human that is adopted in these models. Critically engaging with both opponents of enhancement (Habermas) and its advocates (Harris, Agar, Bostrom, Dworkin), Zylinska also takes some steps towards outlining a nonnormative ethics of enhancement. The latter sees its human and non-human subjects as always already enhanced, and hence dependent, relational and coevolving with technology.     

Audit Society: Rituals of Verification: Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy

Audit Society: Rituals of Verification. Michael Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.183 pp.
Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. Marilyn Strathern. ed. New York: Routledge, 2000. 310 pp.     

Global Violence and Indonesian Muslim Politics

The attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States and the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan provoked fierce threats of violence in Indonesia, the world's largest majority-Muslim country. Western journalists portrayed these reactions as among the most destabilizing in the Muslim world. Less widely reported, however, was the intensification of a struggle between Muslim proponents of democracy and neof undamentalist conservatives, sparked by the same incidents. This article explores the varied reactions of Muslims to the violence of September 11 and its aftermath in light of this contest between rival Muslim groupings. It examines their competing visions of Islam and nation, as well as their supporting alliances in state and society. The example highlights the pluralism of Muslim politics and the special challenges of democratic transitions. Emphasizing the plurality and permeability of civilizations, the example also suggests that there is no "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West but, rather, a more open process of globalization, localization, and exchange. [Keywords: Islam, Indonesia, violence, democratization, civilization]     

Shameless Women: The Anthropological Mirror as Speculum

Woman: An Intimate Geography. Natalie Angier. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. 398 pp.
After Silence: Rape and My Journey Back. Nancy Venable Raine. New York: Crown, 1998. 278 pp.
Cunt:. Declaration of Independence. Inga Muscio. Seattle: Seal, 1998. 277 pp.     

The Ethics and Politics of Human Experimentation, by Paul M. McNeill

...McNeill's book raises some very important questions about the ways in which a society comes to terms with the fact that the practice of medicine is more closely linked with experimentation than ever before. That often puts the doctor-patient relation into a new setting. We have registered our objection to McNeill's tendency to see that relationship, where experimentation is involved, in an adversarial form: there are, we must repeat, more than two sides to this argument, and the medical scientist's commitment is not only to truth at any cost any more than the medical practitioner's is to treatment in all circumstances. Objections do not mean that we cannot learn from this book: on the contrary they may help us to sharpen our perceptions of what should happen. Fair-mindedness would suggest that failure to fulfill expectations is nothing like as widespread or for that matter incurable as McNeill's polemical tone might lead us to believe. When McNeill ceases to be the prosecuting counsel the true worth of his comments will become more apparent.     

Culture, Biology and Anthropological Demography

Culture, Biology and Anthropological Demography . Eric Roth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 217 pp.     

Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction

Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of Reproduction. Faye D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp. eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 (cloth and paper), xii. 450 pages.