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Technofutures, Nature and the Sacred
How do the powerful driving forces of religion and technology interact in the way that humans act towards and within the natural world? Deane-Drummond, Bergmann and Szerszynski are concerned with understanding the complex relation between technology and religious belief in their intersections with the natural world. Working from both theoretical and practical contexts by using newly emerging case studies, including geo-engineering and soil carbon technologies, this volume breaks new ground by engaging theological, scientific, philosophical and cultural aspects of the technology/religion/nature nexus.
Understanding Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980), anthropologist, psychologist, systems thinker, student of animal communication, and insightful environmentalist, was one of the most important holistic thinkers of the twentieth century. Noel G. Charlton offers this first truly accessible introduction to Bateson's work, distilling and clarifying Bateson's understanding of the "mind" or "mental systems" as being present throughout the living Earth, in systems and creatures of all kinds. Part biography, part overview of the evolution of his ideas, Charlton's book situates Bateson's thought in relation to that of other ecological thinkers. This long-awaited volume opens up this challenging thinker's body of work and introduces it to a new generation of readers.
Brave New World?
One of the key issues facing us in the next millennium is the ability to manipulate the genetics of living organisms. The possibility of manipulating human genetics raises many theological, ethical and socio-political issues. These include specific decisions about whether the technology will be developed, how it will be applied and more general questions about the technical manipulation of 'natural' processes. From a theological perspective the human genome project not only challenges particular doctrines, such as that of creation, eschatology and anthropology, but also raises particular issues of social justice and medical ethics. The purpose of this book is to bring together the collective expertise of theologians, scientists and social scientists in order to provide a forum for critique and public debate focused on the human genome project.It is hoped that the results presented in this book offer a sophisticated theological and ethical response.
Nature, Technology and the Sacred
This provocative and timely book argues that contemporary ideas and practices concerning nature and technology remain closely bound up with religious ways of thinking and acting. Using examples from North America, Europe and elsewhere, it reinterprets a range of 'secular' phenomena in terms of their conditioning by a complex series of transformations of the sacred in Western history. The contemporary practices of environmental politics, technological risk behaviour, alternative medicine, vegetarianism and ethical consumption take on new significance as sites of struggle between different sacral orderings. Nature, Technology and the Sacred introduces a radically new direction for today's critical discourse concerning nature and technology – one that reinstates it as a moment within the ongoing religious history of the West.
Reordering Nature
In this book experts in the environment, theology and science argue that the challenge posed to society by biotechnology lies not only in terms of risk/benefit analysis of individual genetic technologies and interventions, but also has implications for the way we think about human identity and our relationship to the natural world. Such a profound--they would suggest religious--challenge requires a response that is genuinely interdisciplinary in nature, a conversation that draws as much on expertise in theology and philosophy as on the natural sciences and risk assessment techniques. They argue that an adequate response must also be sociologically informed in at least two ways. First it must...
Critical Zones
Artists and writers portray the disorientation of a world facing climate change. This monumental volume, drawn from a 2020 exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, portrays the disorientation of life in world facing climate change. It traces this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land on which modernizing humans live: the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another one, hidden, from which they gain their wealth—the land they live on, and the land they live from. Charting the land they will inhabit, they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble,” but a series of critical zones—patchy, heterogenous, discontinu...
Beyond Cutting Edge?
A quick scan of any newsstand is enough to confirm the widespread preoccupation with technological change. As a myriad of articles and advertisements demonstrate, not only are we preoccupied with technology, but we are bombarded with numerous reminders that the cutting edge is in constant motion. Most often the underlying assumption of Christians is that we have no choice but to find ways to cope with the latest and greatest. Indeed, it is often assumed that the church has no choice but to find ways to cope with its new technological context. This book does not make the same assumptions. Building on the work of Mennonite theologian John Howard Yoder, it argues that the practices of the churc...
Why Guattari? A Liberation of Cartographies, Ecologies and Politics
This book examines Félix Guattari, the French psychoanalyst, philosopher, and radical activist, renowned for an energetic style of thought that cuts across conceptual, political, and institutional spheres. Increasingly recognised as a key figure in his own right, Guattari’s influence in contemporary social theory and the modern social sciences continues to grow. From the ecosophy of hurricanes to the micropolitics of cinema, the book draws together a series of Guattarian motifs which animate the complexity of one of the twentieth century’s greatest and most enigmatic thinkers. The book examines techniques and modes of thought that contribute to a liberation of thinking and subjectivity....
Distant Suffering
Distant Suffering, first published in 1999, examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering.
