This volume showcases emerging interdisciplinary scholarship that captures the complex ways in which biological knowledge is testing the nature and structure of legal personhood. Key questions include: What do the new biosciences do to our social, cultural, and legal conceptions of personhood? How does our legal apparatus incorporate new legitimations from the emerging biosciences into its knowledge system? And what kind of ethical, socio-political, and scientific consequences are attached to the establishment of such new legalities? The book examines these problems by looking at materialities, the posthuman, and the relational in the (un)making of legalities. Themes and topics include postgenomic research, gene editing, neuroscience, epigenetics, precision medicine, regenerative medicine, reproductive technologies, border technologies, and theoretical debates in legal theory on the relationship between persons, property, and rights.

This book analyses the relationship between law and violence, the utility of law over violence and whether legality as an approach has an inherent disability in addressing mass violence as a crime. The study is located within international law and assesses whether prosecuting political violence would necessarily entail an abuse of the legal process. The intention is to encourage definition of criminal aggression via legal processes laid down by the International Criminal Court, rather than giving favour to political action under the United Nations Charter. Issues discussed in the book include the controversies over the location of the crime of aggression in either law or politics, taking a legal approach to the problems outlined. Using examples from Libya, the Ivory Coast, and Kenya, the work will be of interest to those working in the areas of international criminal justice, international law, legal theory, and international relations.

Forensic Science provides a comprehensive overview of the sociology of forensic science. Drawing on a wealth of international research and case studies, it explores the intersection of science, technology, law and society and examines the production of forensic knowledge. The book explores a range of key topics such as: • The integration of science into police work and criminal investigation • The relationship between law and science • Ethical and social issues raised by new forensic technology including DNA analysis • Media portrayals of forensic science • Forensic policy and the international agenda for forensic science This new edition has been fully updated, particularly with regard to new technology in relation to the various new forms of DNA technology and facial recognition. Updates and additions include: • Facial recognition technology • Digital forensics and its use in policing • Algorithms (such as probabilistic genotyping) • Genealogical searching • Phenotyping This new edition also reviews and critically appraises recent scholarship in the field, and new international case studies have been introduced, providing readers with an international comparative perspective. Engaging with sociological literature to make arguments about the ways in which forensic science is socially constituted and shapes justice, Forensic Science provides an excellent introduction to students about the location of forensic science and the ways it fits within the criminal justice system, as well as systems of professionalisation and ethics. It is important and compelling reading for students taking a range of courses, including criminal investigation, policing, forensic science, and the sociology of science and technology.

An authoritative Handbook which offers a discussion of the social, political, ethical and economic consequences and implications of the new bio-sciences. The Handbook takes an interdisciplinary approach providing a synoptic overview of contemporary international social science research on genetics, genomics and the new life sciences. It brings together leading scholars with expertise across a wide-ranging spectrum of research fields related to the production, use, commercialisation and regulation of genetics knowledge. The Handbook is structured into seven cross-cutting themes in contemporary social science research on genetics with introductions written by internationally renowned section editors who take an interdisciplinary approach to offer fresh insights on recent developments and issues in often controversial fields of study. The Handbook explores local and global issues and critically approaches a wide range of public and policy questions, providing an invaluable reference source to a wide variety of researchers, academics and policy makers.

Starting in 1978, when the first babies conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF) were born in the UK and India, assisted reproduction has become a global industry. Contributors to this edited collection reflect on the global dimensions of IVF and assisted reproductive technologies, examining how people have used these technologies to create diverse family forms, including gay, lesbian, and transgender parenthood, as well as complex configurations of genetic, gestational, and social parenthood. The authors examine how IVF and other reproductive technologies have and have not circulated around the globe; how reproductive technologies can be situated historically, nationally, locally, and culturally; and the ways in which culture, practices, regulations, norms, families, and kinship ties may be reinforced or challenged through the use of assisted reproduction.

Genetic Surveillance and Crime Control presents a new empirical and conceptual framework for understanding trends of genetic surveillance in different countries in Europe and in other jurisdictions around the world. The use of DNA or genome for state-level surveillance for crime governance is becoming the norm in democratic societies. In the post-DNA, contemporary modes of criminal identification are gradually changing through the increasing expansion of transnational sharing of DNA data, along with the development of highly controversial genetic technologies that pose acute challenges to privacy and generate fears of discrimination, racism and stigmatization. Some questions that guide this book are: How is genetic surveillance in the governance of crime intertwined with society, ethics, culture, and politics? What are the views and expectations of diverse stakeholders –scientists, police agencies, and non-governmental organizations? How can social sciences research about genetic surveillance accommodate socio-cultural and historical differences, and be sensitive to specificities of post-authoritarian societies in Europe? Taking an interdisciplinary approach focused on challenges to genetic privacy, human rights and citizenship in contemporary societies , this book will be of interest to students and scholars of social studies of science and technology, sociology, criminology, law and policing, international relations and forensic sciences.

This book ​ critically examines the COVID-19 pandemic and its legal and biological governance using a multidisciplinary approach. The perspectives reflected in this volume investigate the imbrications between technosphere and biosphere at social, economic, and political levels. The biolegal dimensions of our evolving understanding of “home” are analysed as the common thread linking the problem of zoonotic diseases and planetary health with that of geopolitics, biosecurity, bioeconomics and biophilosophies of the plant-animal-human interface. In doing so, the contributions collectively highlight the complexities, challenges, and opportunities for humanity, opening new perspectives on how to inhabit our shared planet. This volume will broadly appeal to scholars and students in anthropology, cultural and media studies, history, philosophy, political science and public health, sociology and science and technology studies.

This book explores the promissory discourses and practices associated with the bioeconomy, focusing especially on the transformation of institutions; the creation, appropriation, and distribution of value; the struggle over resources, power, and meaning; and the role of altruism, kinship, and care practices. Governments and science enthusiasts worldwide are embracing the bioeconomy, championing it as the key to health, wealth, and sustainability, while citing it as justification to transform research and regulatory institutions, health and agricultural practices, ethics of privacy and ownership, and conceptions of self and kin. Drawing together studies from Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe, this volume encompasses subjects as diverse as regenerative medicine, population health research, agricultural finance, biobanking, assisted reproduction, immigration, breastfeeding, self-help groups, GM fish, and mining sewage.

This collection discusses appropriate methodologies for comparative research and applies this to the issue of trial transformation in the context of achieving justice in post-conflict societies. In developing arguments in relation to these problems, the authors use international sentencing and the question of victims' interests and expectations as a focus. The conclusions reached are wide-ranging and haighly significant in challenging existing conceptions for appreciating and giving effect to the justice demands of victims of war and social conflict. The themes developed demonstrate clearly how comparative contextual analysis facilitates our understanding of the legal and social contexts of international punishment and how this understanding can provide the basis for expanding the role of restorative international criminal justice within the context of international criminal trials.