Between Self-Determination and Social Technology: Medicine, Biopolitics and the New Techniques of Procedural Management

The book critically examines how concepts such as self-determination, participation, ethics, and dialogue, developed not least by the feminist movement and directed against repression, heteronomy, and professional paternalism, have been integrated into new contexts and transformed into new social technologies. Crossing a variety of fields from birthing, genetic counseling, living wills, hospital ethics, to population policies and politics of biomedicine, it shows that medicine and medicine-related policies and practices form crucial arenas of these transformations. What we see emerging is procedural management as a new set of social techniques.