Non-human Elements Research Articles

Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics by Jenny Bangham

Reviewed by: Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics by Jenny Bangham Boel Berner (bio) Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics By Jenny Bangham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 328. Blood Relations: Transfusion and the Making of Human Genetics By Jenny Bangham. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 328. The 1952 British film Emergency Call tells the tear-jerking story of a five-year-old girl suffering life-threatening blood loss after an accident. An intense medical and police search ensues to find donors with her extremely rare blood group (there are three)—and one of them turns out to be Black. But blood has no color other than red, the film's doctor affirms: "White, Black, brown, yellow; human blood's the same the world over." And the girl survives. Jenny Bangham's book Blood Relations analyzes the postwar scientific and medical themes captured in the film. Bangham expertly traces the connections between the search for new and rare blood groups, the mapping of ostensibly race-neutral genetic differences in populations across the world, and the crucial role of bureaucratic networks with detailed information about donors and blood groups. She thus sheds new light on the twentieth-century history of genetics. Her book starts with the 1939 British war effort to secure a reliable blood supply for transfusions. This meant setting up local blood depots and systems for blood typing almost a million donors. British geneticists seized this information and created linkages between their laboratories and the blood depots. Blood circulated through society, via donors to recipients and research institutions. So did paper—protocols, registries, index cards, and labels—enabling ground-breaking analyses of blood group inheritance and human diversity. Bangham then backtracks to capture the pre-history of these efforts, from Landsteiner's discovery of strange agglutination reactions in 1900, via studies certifying that blood groups are stable across a person's lifetime and inherited in a Mendelian pattern, to blood group analysis for criminal and paternity cases in the interwar years. These scientific advances made it possible to trace the distribution of blood groups across populations, a practice with clear racist undertones in many countries. British researchers in the 1930s strove to avoid this bias and change eugenics into human genetics oriented towards finding, for example, the genetic patterns behind diseases. The institutionalized systems set up in Britain during the war provided material for extensive studies. Bangham tells the previously [End Page 908] untold story of these endeavors and their growing national and international importance after World War II. Using a wealth of archival material, she portrays the multifaceted assemblage of human and non-human elements required to study human genetics: bodies, populations, and the precious raw materials of blood cells and antisera. Scientific advance, she argues, is not merely theory and laboratory work. It also involves mundane things like mail delivery vans, administration, pipettes, and freezers. Bangham's narrative stays close to the scientific actors involved and their often impressive capacity to build networks of contacts and financial support. But she also problematizes the decisions involved in some of the research, most interestingly in the postwar British studies to map blood groups across the world in a purportedly non-racist way. It involved a vast scheme of blood collection from local populations overseas and masses of samples and protocols being sent for analysis to the London institute led by Arthur Mourant. However, as Bangham's careful analysis shows, even this endeavor had a hidden racist bias. Mourant used systems of classification based on pre-war stereotypes to sort people into population categories. He relied upon local informers' selection of which individuals to bleed and their hunches of what ethnic groups these individuals belonged to. Therefore, the value of these vast studies has been contested. By the 1960s, too, genetics had evolved. The tools and materials of human genetics were increasingly decoupled from the collection of therapeutic human blood—the very relationship on which British geneticists had built their wartime and postwar achievements. Present-day genetics, too, as Bangham notes by the end of her original and well-written study, comes with a promise of a neutral way to...

Intertwined Destinies: Colonization of Indigenious Peoples and Environment in V. S. Naipaul’s in a Free State

Postcolonial ecologies direct our attention to the specially environmental dimensions of literary works by focusing on the often overlooked nonhuman elements, ecological disasters and the inequitable distribution of resources and waste in developing nations. Decolonization has not solved the problems of poverty, corruption, pollution, disorder, and other vices that characterized colonial countries and has brought about little or no significant difference to the predicament of the environment and the masses in postcolonial countries. This situation is vividly demonstrated in Trinidadian-British writer V. S. Naipual’s In a Free State in which environmental problems as well as social issues continue to directly bear on the destiny of indigenous peoples. In this respect, this study discusses how the fate of the environment and indigenous peoples are intertwined, particularly in postcolonial societies with reference to the work of V.S. Naipaul’s novel. The paper engages with the subject of postcolonial ecologies in discussing the relationship between indigenous peoples and the forms of colonization and its impacts that Naipaul describes in the novel. The paper establishes the centrality of indigenous peoples to the modern colonial context while underscoring the continuity of its resulting environmental degradation in the postcolonial context.

Notes on Contributors

Previous article FreeNotes on ContributorsFull TextPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreTommi Alho is a researcher at the Åbo Akademi University. He publishes on neo-Latin, history of Classical education and Latin linguistics, and has recently edited (with Jason Finch and Roger D. Sell) the volume Renaissance Man: Essays on Literature and Culture for Anthony W. Johnson (John Benjamins, 2019). His publications include Classical Education in the Restoration Grammar School: A Case Study of Orationes et Carmina aliaque exercitia (Canterbury Cathedral Archives, Lit. MS E41; PhD diss., Åbo Akademi University, 2020).Jonathan Burton is professor and chair of English at Whittier College. He is the author of Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579–1624 (2005) and coauthor with Ania Loomba of Race in Early Modern England: A Documentary Companion (2007). His recent publications treat the entwined histories of race and empire, Shakespearean education, and American appropriations of Shakespeare.Nicholas Fenech is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, where he is a Mellon Foundation fellow. His research is animated by transnational approaches to Renaissance literature and the study of primary sources, examining how cultural change is registered atomically in the circulation of textual fragments and rhetorical forms. His work on tragedy and political theology has appeared in the German Quarterly, and an essay on Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the rhetoric of exemplarity in Elizabethan political manuscripts is forthcoming from Studies in Philology.Aleksi Mäkilähde is an affiliated researcher at the University of Turku and currently a visiting postdoctoral researcher at University College London. He works in the fields of linguistics and philology, having focused especially on historical multilingualism, particularly in his monograph dissertation The Philological-Pragmatic Approach: A Study of Language Choice and Code-Switching in Early Modern English School Performances (University of Turku, 2019). He has also recently coedited (with Ville Leppänen and Esa Itkonen) the volume Normativity in Language and Linguistics (John Benjamins, 2019).Elizabeth Sandis is a theater historian specializing in neo-Latin dramatic traditions of the early modern period. Trained as a Classicist, she moved into English studies to complete a doctorate at Merton College, Oxford, on the place of student drama in the culture of English university life, before taking up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. Her monograph Growing up Dramatically at Oxford and Cambridge: University Men and Their Plays in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press) is the first study of university drama to cover the Tudor and Stuart periods.Andrew Sofer is professor of English at Boston College. Since 2012 he has taught at the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard, where he has helped develop over sixty books-in-progress by emerging scholars. His books include The Stage Life of Props; Dark Matter: Invisibility in Drama, Theater, and Performance; and Wave, a poetry collection. His Theatre Journal essay “How to Do Things with Demons: Conjuring Performatives in Doctor Faustus” received ASTR’s inaugural Oscar G. Brockett Prize for the best essay in theater research.William Steffen is an assistant professor of English at American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts. His doctoral thesis, “Globalizing Nature on the Shakespearean Stage,” which was awarded the Shakespeare Association of America’s J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize for 2020, revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the nonhuman world on the early modern stage. His work, which celebrates accident, unpredictability, and nonhuman elements as productive agents in performance, traces strategies from early modern performance practices for confronting modern ecological crises. His previous publication, “Grafting and Ecological Imperialism in John Fletcher’s Bonduca,” appeared in the Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies. Previous article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Renaissance Drama Volume 48, Number 2Fall 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/712375 Views: 115 © 2020 by Northwestern University. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Posthuman Knowledge

Posthuman Knowledge

Writing at the Interface: A Research and Teaching Program for Everyday Digital Media Literacy

Our patterns of connection shape how we think, write, read and relate. In response, scholars have begun to understand and teach literacy as a networked phenomenon. This essay contributes to that effort. I argue that in an age of media convergence, to think networked literacy is to think everyday digital media literacy habits, particularly as they relate to the design and maintenance of information ecosystems. Combining new materialist writing studies scholarship with design thinking and media theory, I propose and model a materialist approach to literacy analysis that respects both the human and non-human elements in such systems. I then discuss how this approach might inform writing pedagogy.

Understanding the relationship of conflict and success in software development projects

Abstract Context Software development incorporates numerous people with diverse expertise and expectations. This makes conflict a common phenomenon in software development. Besides human causes, many conflicts in software development root in the tools and processes. Moreover, the growing role of software in any type of system is increasing the heterogeneity in software projects. The number and variety of tools and processes are increasing. Nevertheless, the relationship between conflicts, particularly rooted in non-human elements, and software project success is still unclear. Objective We aim to understand the impact of conflict on the success of software development projects for different types of conflict and different environments. Particularly, we distinguish between human-rooted conflict (HRC) and non-human-rooted conflict (NHRC). Moreover, we investigate whether organization size and team size moderate the impact of conflict on software project success. Methods First, we conduct a survey and analyze it using structural equation modeling (SEM) to investigate any correlation between conflict and software project success. Second, we explore the reasons behind the relationship between conflict and software project success by conducting 13 semi-structured expert interviews. Results HRC is always a threat to software project success for any organization or team size. Based on the interviews, resolving an HRC is regularly problematic. On the other hand, NHRC is negatively correlated with software project success only in corporate organizations and small teams. High coordination overhead and dependency on tools and processes make NHRC more influential in corporate organizations. In contrast, overlooking non-human elements and lack of experienced individuals in smaller teams make them more vulnerable to NHRC. Conclusion While the detrimental impact of HRC is constant for software project success, NHRC can be controlled efficiently. Corporate organizations need to frequently improve the non-human elements in the development. Smaller teams should expect tools and processes to be significantly influential in their success.

CREATIVITY OF HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN MATTER INTERWOVEN: AUTONOMOUS SENSORY MERIDIAN RESPONSE VIDEOS IN A POSTHUMAN PERSPECTIVE

The problematization of the idea of creativity resulting in the revision of concepts about autonomous, creative, and human self has been a reality since the end of modernism, or maybe even longer. Postmodernism, as well as theories of posthumanism and new materialism, dealing with categories such as materiality, virtual reality, transgression, hybridization, etc., offer some reflections on the idea of non-human creativity, which is no longer an attribute immanently assigned to human, but a result of interaction between human and non-human elements, including the affective friction of bodies made of matter. Mostly inspired by the theories and methodologies of posthuman studies, studies in new materialism, and new media studies, the article aims to answer the question about the types of creativity appearing in a new YouTube phenomenon – autonomous sensory meridian response videos massively published in recent years. The article is an attempt to give a comprehensive account of the idea of posthuman creativity – with its sub-types like sensual creativity or techno-creativity – visible in extremely popular, however under-researched, autonomous sensory meridian response artworks. The paper puts forward the thesis about autonomous sensory meridian response being a model artistic phenomenon in which the entanglement of human and non-human matter results in a form of posthuman creativity. Numerous examples of autonomous sensory meridian response videos have been analysed, pointing to the specific modes of creative collaboration of human and non-human elements on the film set. In conclusion, it has been shown that autonomous sensory meridian response artworks become the product of posthuman creativity resulting from mutual, affective interaction of bodies.

Becoming-Leech

This article develops the notions of ‘hybridity’ through animal-human-technological triangulations, focussing primarily on the performance art, VR installation work, Becoming Leeches: Episode 1—Having dinner, by artist Doo-Sung Yoo. In this work, humans and living leeches ‘power’ animated counterparts in VR to journey through a toxic world to attempt to heal the planet. The piece presents a hybrid experience/experiment in which humans can better recognize their positionality alongside non-human elements, and also shift the human participant into an active, embodied role within a network of hybrid ‘becoming’ that simulates a shared experience. The article examines questions of hybridity in this cyborgean experience and examines how VR technologies can place humans in the position of the nonhuman other to offer new modes of interrelating between live and virtual networks through which we might become more resilient and willing to work together. In this interwoven network of human and non-human, complicated further by technological entities, we must begin to become hybrid.

Why hasn't high-frequency trading swept the board? Shares, sovereign bonds and the politics of market structure

In today’s trading of liquid financial instruments, there are two main contending agencements (in Callon’s ‘actor-network’ sense of combinations of humans and nonhuman elements that manifest distributed agency): one agencement yokes together automated high-frequency trading (HFT) and open, anonymous electronic order books; the other is organized above all around the distinction between ‘dealers’ and ‘clients’. Drawing upon interviews with 321 market participants, we examine differences in the relative presence of the two agencements. We focus in this article on the processes that have given rise to especially sharp differences between the trading of shares and of sovereign bonds, and between the trading of the latter in the US and Europe. The article contributes to two literatures: the sociological literature on trading (especially on HFT), which we argue needs expanded to encompass what can be called ‘the politics of market structure’; and the nascent political-economy literature on the processes shaping how sovereign bonds are traded. In terms of underlying theory, we advocate far greater attention in actor-network economic sociology to the state and its agencies and a stronger focus in political economy on materiality.

Two Types of KES in Korean Pseudo-Clefts

This paper is aimed to investigate the structure of Korean pseudo-cleft constructions with the bound noun kes in subject position, by examining the asymmetry between two kess in the subject position of pseudo-clefts and in the pre-copula position. The paper argues that the former can represent a human entity as well as non-human elements because it is universal. It denotes a set of presuppositionality, and thus, it has to raise to SpecTopicP through the predicational inversion. As a result, it precedes the foci in specificational constructions. The other is specific, denoting only a non-human material thing. Thus they don’t appear in specificational reading but in predicational, which requires agreement between the subject and the complement. Conclusively, Korean has two different types of kes in pseudo-cleft constructions.

Construção da agenda de inclusão financeira à luz da Teoria Ator-Rede

Resumo Este artigo procurou compreender a atuação dos atores no processo de construção social da agenda de inclusão financeira no Brasil, utilizando a Teoria Ator-Rede (TAR) como lente teórica, visto que a formação da agenda pode ser compreendida como um contínuo processo de associações que envolve diferentes mediadores. Os dados foram coletados por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas com representantes das instituições envolvidas no processo de construção da agenda em tela, bem como de fontes documentais. A dinâmica do processo de construção da agenda de inclusão financeira foi analisada considerando os quatro momentos da translação (problematização, atração de interesses, recrutamento e mobilização) apresentados na literatura pertinente. Verificou-se que a agenda de inclusão financeira no Brasil é fruto de um processo incremental, que contou com a atuação de uma ampla gama de atores (do governo, do mercado, fomentadores e estudiosos e internacionais) e que foi influenciada por alguns elementos não humanos, destacando-se o Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) como ator focal do processo.

Exploration of quality dimensions that influence customer perceptions of service performance: insights from higher education

This paper sets out to explore the quality dimensions that influence customer perceptions of service performance among different customer segments in higher education. A survey was conducted by administering a questionnaire with 26 items measuring quality dimensions to 434 customers in a higher education setting that has implemented total quality management. The survey yielded a return of 364 usable questionnaires and the 83.9% response rate deemed to be relatively good for further analysis. This paper found significant similarities and differences in the quality dimensions that influence customer perceptions of service performance in higher education. In particular, current students and student alumni reported similar expectations of human and non-human elements of service delivery, whereas employers from the industry had greater expectations on core services. Interestingly, the levels of satisfaction among these three customer groups were generally below their expectations, which indicate new possibilities that may benefit from additional exploration and validation.

Understanding controversies in digital platform innovation processes: The Google Glass case

Due to their scaling potential and complexity, digital platforms tend to generate public interest, and in some cases significant controversies and paradoxes. Previous research has generated knowledge about controversies in digital platform innovations. However, this work mainly focuses on the types of controversies and their effects rather than on the process of controversy emergence. In this article, we analyze how controversies related to digital platform innovation emerge and how they unfold over the innovation process. We analyze the case of the Google Glass failure to establish this ARSG (Augmented Reality Smart Glasses) extension to Google's digital platform. The paper contributes to the study of controversies by analyzing the digital platform innovation process as a process of translation, in which there are possible controversy emergence points originated in types of disagreements among the different human actors involved and their interactions with non-human elements. These disagreements are related to specific features of digital platforms: the digital platform generativity, the multisided market arrangements in the platform; the loosely coupled layers of technologies and applications involved, and the opaqueness that results from these arrangements. The framework proposed can support digital platform scholars and practitioners to in better understand and manage controversies.

Traditional sailing boats, embodied knowledge(s) and dwelling in coastal rural communities: The case of the ‘Galway Hooker’ in South West Conamara, Ireland

Abstract In the context of a healthy flourishing within rural studies on embodied knowledges and ‘human-nonhuman-nature’ relations, such a relational focus is of especial significance for coastal places where the relations and knowledges connecting humans with less predictable natural phenomena (tides, weather, rocks, fish) and nonhuman elements, such as sea vessels, served to generate ‘dwelling’. Within wider rural studies there is a need for greater attentiveness to those rural places, traditions and knowledges where the sea rather than land has occupied a more dominant presence in the lives and imaginations of people. This study is based in the coastal and rural region of south west Conamara in the West of Ireland where a distinctive family of boats collectively known as the ‘hooker’ remains a deeply revered part of the region's cultural heritage across generations and continues to be actively used for recreation and leisure. Our qualitative study is based primarily on interviews with thirty-three badoiri (‘boatmen’) across older and younger generations, as well as participant observation and documentary evidence. We attempt to show how the coalescence of the natural, material and cultural dimensions of place was constituted through the hooker as sailing vessel. Despite the decline in its livelihood dimension, we seek to place its community significance and continuity within the distinctive ‘embodied spatialities of being’ that are quite different in places where the sea has played a prominent element in the assembly of life over time. In charting the historically vital role of the hooker and the badoiri embodied knowledge for dwelling in south west Conamara, we show to some extent the distinct ‘rhythmic practices of place’ of coastal communities over much of their history. We argue that we cannot fully appreciate how contemporary places, spaces and the experience of ‘community’ and ‘tradition’ are rendered meaningful unless we understand the nature of such connections and their relational dimensions across time.

Facebook out of control? A technically-mediated autonomous technology

On the controversy triggered by the influence of the so-called “fake news” that circulated on Facebook in the 2016 United States presidential elections, we notice the emergence of an idea of “control of technology”, both in the platform’s official publications and steps announced after the event, and in the specialized media demands. In order to refute the idea of total control of technology and defend the recognition of the action of nonhuman elements, thus contributing to a better understanding of the platform’s actions, we use the concepts of “autonomous technology”, by Langdon Winner (1977), and “technical mediation”, by Bruno Latour (1994). Methodologically, we were inspired by the Cartography of Controversies (VENTURINI, 2010) and worked with content collected through the platform’s official pages and media vehicles that covered the event from July 2016 to July 2018.

Towards a criminology of atmospheres: Law, affect and the codes of the street

The street has a long and distinguished pedigree in criminology as a site of human sociability, transgression and spontaneity. Recent scholarship in legal studies has, however, explored the role that non-human actors play in the normative ordering of urban life. These interventions suggest the need for criminologists of the street to take seriously not only the experiential foreground of crime but also its background. In this article, we seek to bring these traditions into dialogue through engagement with the concept of ‘atmosphere’ – a place-based mood or spatialised feeling that blends human and non-human elements, and has the capacity to act in a quasi-agentic manner. Drawing on an experiment in ‘atmospheric methods’ conducted during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Umbrella Movement, in which some of the city’s central streets were occupied for 79 days, we seek to demonstrate that the analytics of ‘atmosphere’ offers a unique conceptual approach to urban life and street crime in the contemporary age.

From individuals to the organization

Purpose This study aims to develop a process model that details the mechanisms and learning processes by which entrepreneurial learning transpires at multiple levels in the organization. Using the transactive memory system (TMS) framework as a reference, the model specifies how individual streams of knowledge are routinized in nonhuman elements and, over time, become embedded in organizational routines and procedures. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a case-study methodology building on 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews, 20 h of non-participative observations and internal company documents. Findings The study demonstrates that knowledge is channeled from individuals to the organization via mechanisms that operate at the venture-team level – principally externalizing distinctions; rotating task work; co-constructing the task; and routinizing behavior. These mechanisms are fundamental for creating knowledge repertoires on which team members can build and for channeling different knowledge domains into the organization. Originality/value The study offers a dynamic view of entrepreneurial learning, underlining the structural and transactive components of TMS as being foundational for embedding knowledge in organizational routines and procedures.

Exploring Gamification for Recruitment through Actor Network Theory

This article examines the benefits of applying gamification in the recruitment process. It highlights how it can be effectively leveraged with the right design by involving various stakeholders at varied stages. The Actor Network Theory (ANT) as a theoretical ground has been used as a reference point to take a more detailed look at the ways in which gamification can be effectively deployed for recruitment by organizations. We refer to ANT and the interaction between the human and non-human elements, here, the applicants, the other stakeholders, and the gamification tools, to serve the greater organizational purpose. Questions that interrogate between rules and practices arise, viz. can the game be effectively customized to achieve sophisticated and enhanced selection outcomes. By applying gamification as the reference point within the Actor Network Theory, their associated potential for further research and applications is achieved. A valuable perspective in gaining insights for further understanding of this theory in today’s technologically progressive environment has also been discussed for further reflection.

Community Care: The Ethics of Care in a Residential Community

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relationship between ‘care’ and ‘community’ in the context of a residential community established to offer hospitality and support to people with addictions, mental health problems and other troubles. The community is located in a rural part of England and was established as a Christian community offering hospitality to people of all faiths or none. The source of data is oral history interviews conducted at the time of the community’s 60th anniversary. Feminist care ethics is used to offer an analysis of what constitutes care in this setting, as well as to explore insights into caregiver/care receiver relationships and the specific nature of responsibility in this context. The significance of both place and the non-human elements of the community (animals, cultivated land) are considered, as well as the importance of time in relation to daily and seasonal rhythms of community life. The article suggests that care for the community is necessary to sustain care for members of the community and that this offers a valuable different perspective from an emphasis on individualised care.

Flooding water and society

AbstractAs social scientists of water, we need to keep evaluating the analytical tools we use. Through the example of floods, we here develop a critique of one of those tools, the hydrosocial cycle framework, in order to expand our conceptualizations of water. The hydrosocial cycle is a re‐elaboration of the classical hydrological cycle which explicitly politicizes and denaturalizes the study of hydrological systems. In political ecology, such a conceptual framework has been pivotal to the understanding of how water circulates in society through a complex web of power relations, economic structures, and processes that are at the same time spatial and historical. But when we deploy this concept to examine floods, a number of limitations emerge. In this article, we formulate three specific theses which focus on those limitations: (a) an overemphasis on society, (b) a lack of attention to ecology and, more generally the relationships between water and other nonhuman elements and processes, and (c) a heuristic overreliance on the metaphors of flow and cycle. In developing these three theses, we discern alternative paths of analysis to conceptualize floodwaters at a time when these events increasingly constitute a significant threat to humans and nonhumans alike. Our hope is that this critique will also contribute to broader interdisciplinary debates about water and society.This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water as Imagined and RepresentedWater and Life > Conservation, Management, and AwarenessHuman Water > Water Governance