Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots |
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Author:
R. Davis-Floyd
By Routledge
Average Customer Rating: 
List Price: $115.00
Our Price: $95.71
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Product Description
From fetuses scanned ultrasonically to computer hackers in daycare, contemporary children are increasingly rendered cyborg by their immersion in technoculture. As we are faced with reproductive choices connected directly with technologies, we often have trouble gaining perspective on our own cultural co-dependency with these very same technologies. Our notions of fetal health, maternal risk and child IQ are inseparable from them.
Cyborg Babies tracks the process of reproducing children in symbiosis with pervasive technology and offers a range of perspectives, from resistance to ethnographic analysis to science fiction. Cultural anthropologists and social critics offer cutting-edge ethnographies, critiques, and personal narratives of cyborg conceptions (sperm banks, IVF, surrogacy) and prenatal (mis)diagnosis (DES, ultrasound, amniocentesis); the technological de- and reconstruction of birth in the hospital (electronic fetal monitors, epidurals); and the effects of computer simulation games and cyborg toys and stories on children's emergent consciousness.
Contributors include Janet Isaacs Ashford, Elizabeth Cartwright, David Chamberlain, Jennifer Croissant, Charis M. Cussins, Robbie Davis-Floyd, Joseph Dumit, Eugenia Georges, Anne Hill, Mizuko Ito, Emily Martin, Steven Daniel Mentor, Janneli F. Miller, Lisa Mitchell, Lisa Jean Moore, Rayna Rapp, Matthew A. Schmidt, Syvia Sensiper, Elizabeth Roberts and Sherry Turkle.
Examining the increasing cyborgification of the American child, from conception through birth and beyond, Cyborg Babies considers its implications for human cultural and psychological evolution.
Amazon.com Review
The editors of this anthology and the writers featured here use the term cyborg seriously. They do not, however, use it in its science fiction sense. As defined here, we are all cyborgs to the extent that we are not merely using technology but have become dependent, perhaps codependent, upon it. The anthology examines the role high technology now plays in the development of our children, from technology-based conception to the technological toys children play with. The contributions cover a wide range of philosophies, from those who find current trends alarming to those who consider recent developments a great boon for all humanity. All agree, though, that technology has caused--or at least paved the way for--serious social changes in the way children are conceived, gestated, born, and raised. The writers look not only at how technology has changed the processes but how it has shaped our views of childbirth and childcare. Technologies addressed range from artificial insemination to the use of ultrasound and even teddy bears that comfort a baby with the sounds of the womb. The range of philosophies explored is equally wide. Emily Martin, for example, looks at the medical metaphors for mothers' bodies in her essay "The Fetus as Intruder," while Mizuko Ito examines simulation games and destructive impulses. With many diverse perspectives here, it's unlikely that you'll agree with everything you read, but you'll certainly find much worth thinking about. --Elizabeth Lewis
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Anthology of Feminism, Technoscience and Reproduction, 2000-05-29
Sixteen essays make a contribution to "cyborg anthropology" and "cyborg feminism." Volume considers human reproduction through the lens of an interrogation of the cyborg metaphor, its power, pleasure, promise, and threat. Section one essays discuss medico-technological interventions in conception and contraception including production of "technosemen." Section two includes essays by Emily Martin, Rayna Rapp and others, examining gestation and the use of medical imaging (ultrasound) and screening (amniocentesis) technologies to produce "normal" and "healthy" fetuses. Section three essays consider technobirth, focusing on the medical monitoring and management of the mother's body. Section four considers childrearing in a digital culture, including essay by Sherry Turkle on cyborg babies in a culture of "simulation." Exceptional introduction by David-Floyd and Dumit provides historical/theoretical overview of cyborg metaphor as quintessential postmodern myth and tool.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 176
EAN: 9780415916035
ISBN: 0415916038
Label: Routledge
Manufacturer: Routledge
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 358
Publication Date: 1998-09-02
Publisher: Routledge
Studio: Routledge |
