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Posted Mon, 4 May 2009 14:15:14
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Reminder, apologies for cross posting
The Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Sociology,
Goldsmiths invites you to the following seminar:
Transforming Behaviour: Human and animal nature in the behavioural genetics
laboratory
Gail Davies
Wednesday, 6 May 4 - 6pm
12th floor seminar room Warming Tower
Goldsmiths, University of London
This paper looks at the relationship between changing understandings of
human and animal behaviour as they are enmeshed in and emerge from the
complex contexts of contemporary behavioural genetics. Mice models, and
more recently genetically altered mice, have played a critical role in
understanding human affective disorders, linking animal models, laboratory
experimentation and therapeutic interventions. This paper explores the
achievement of these links, but also the challenges to them. Attention to
the site of the laboratory reveals the contingencies and human capabilities
intricately involved in the performance of such experiments, meaning they
can be difficult to standardize and repeat. Arguments about environmental
enrichment reveal different interpretations of animal behaviour, challenging
the external validity of animal models. Such attention suggests the
material practices and scientific arguments linking human diseases and the
genetically modified mice are ultimately circular and the meanings of animal
behaviour remain ambiguous. Yet something is clearly being transformed in
these circulations. Utilising the theoretical insights from Agamben and
Latour, I suggest this is our understandings of both animal and human
nature, and the relationship between the two.
Gail Davies is a lecturer in Geography at UCL in London. Her research is
broadly concerned with the way relations between humans, nonhumans and the
natural world are imagined and governed, connecting to debates around the
'geographies of science' and 'more-than-human geographies'. She is
currently tracing the biogeography of genetically altered laboratory animals
to understand the role played by transgenic animals in the spaces of the
international bioeconomy and in political and ethical debate.
Enquiries to: Trudi Kent, Department of Sociology, ext. 7707,
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