Full Description
Practice Theory and the Biosocial - Microbes, Matter and Milieu shows what recent developments in social theory bring to questions about how bacteria, viruses, microscopic materials and societies develop in tandem. The examples discussed - from urban infrastructures to the medieval plague and from antibiotic resistance to epigenetics -develop an account of how previous and present arrangements make some futures more likely than others and how unequal patterns of exposure and entanglement arise. This book aims to demonstrate the relevance of social and practice theories by overcoming classic distinctions between the very small and the very large, between agency and structure, and between nature and culture.
Contents
Introduction: Starting Points
Part I: Encounters and Exposures
Chapter 1. Separation and Concentration: Water Infrastructures in Practice
Chapter 2. Contagion and Circulation: How Infectious Diseases Spread
Part II: Entanglement and Intermingling
Chapter 3. Recursive Relations and Spatial Distributions: Antibiotics and Antimicrobial Resistance in Practice
Chapter 4. Passing Through and Passing On: Beyond Embodiment
Part III: Differences and Directions
Chapter 5. Qualities and Inequalities: The Air We Breathe
Conclusion
References
Index
