Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

This title provides an exciting approach to some of the most contentious issues in discussions around globalization - bioscientific research, neoliberalism, governance - from the perspective of the "anthropological" problems they pose; in other words, in terms of their implications for how individual and collective life is subject to technological, political, and ethical reflection and intervention. It offers a ground-breaking approach to central debates about globalization with chapters written by leading scholars from across the social sciences.It examines a range of phenomena that articulate broad structural transformations: technoscience, circuits of exchange, systems of governance, and regimes of ethics or values. It investigates these phenomena from the perspective of the 'anthropologica' problems they pose. It covers a broad range of geographical areas: Africa, the Middle East, East and South Asia, North America, South America, and Europe. It grapples with a number of empirical problems of popular and academic interest - from the organ trade, to accountancy, to pharmaceutical research, to neoliberal reform.