Barry Barnes

The announcement in 2003 that the Human Genome Project had completed its map of the entire human genome was heralded as a stunning scientific breakthrough: our first full picture of the basic building blocks of human life. Since then, boasts about the benefits?and warnings of the dangers?of genomics have remained front-page news, with everyone agreeing that genomics has the potential to radically alter life as we know it. For the nonscientist, the claims and counterclaims are dizzying?what does it really mean to understand the genome? Barry Barnes and John Dupré offer an answer to that question.

"In this book, one of the leading commentators in the field argues that social theory is moving in the wrong direction in its reflections on human freedom and autonomy. It has borrowed notions of 'agency' and 'choice' from everyday discourse, but increasingly it puts a misconceived individualistic gloss upon them. Against this, Barnes unequivocally identifies human beings as social agents in a profound sense, and emphasises the vital importance of their sociability. Notions of 'agency', 'freedom' and 'choice' have to be understood by reference to their role in communicative interaction; they are key components of the discourse through which human beings identify each other, and have effects upon each other, as social agents."--Jacket.