Skip to main content
Palgrave Macmillan

Biolegality

A Critical Introduction

  • Book
  • May 2024
  • Latest edition

Overview

  • Brings a critical introduction to philosophical and anthropological issues at the intersection of law and biology
  • Offers biolegality as a conceptual and methodological toolkit to study biolegal knowledge production
  • A must-read for scholars and students interested in the challenges that biotechnology bring to law, justice, and society

Part of the book series: Biolegalities (BIOGA)

Buy print copy

Hardcover Book USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
This title has not yet been released. You may pre-order it now and we will ship your order when it is published on 1 Jun 2024.
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Keywords

  • Biolegalities
  • Biotechnology
  • Socio-legal Studies
  • Law and Biology
  • Sociology of Law
  • Technoscience
  • Science Policy
  • Technology Policy
  • Bioconstitutionalism
  • Right to Privacy
  • Genetic Age
  • Biopolitics
  • Politics of Biology

About this book

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the empirical and theoretical problems posed by the encounter between law and biology in the twenty-first century. How does biotechnology and new bioscientific knowledge affect our legal institutions, our sense of justice, and our ways of relating to one another? To answer these questions, authors Marc de Leeuw and Sonja van Wichelen examine the complex and often contested ways in which biotechnology and biological knowledge are reworked by, with, and against legal knowledge. As this book shows, recent developments in the life sciences—including molecular biology, immunology, and the neurosciences—and their applications in forensics, medicine, and agriculture test longstanding legal forms, such as property, personhood, parenthood, and (collective) identity, ultimately constituting the current field of “biolegality.” The authors argue that these biolegal contestations represent philosophical and anthropological challenges to existing understandings of exchange, self, kinship, and community. By addressing how biology and law inform new ways of relating and knowing, the book proposes a programmatic intervention, asserting the pivotal role the study of biolegality plays in advancing social and political theory.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Sonja van Wichelen

  • UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia

    Marc de Leeuw

About the authors

Sonja van Wichelen is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology with the School for Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research broadly engages with the body, law, and science in the age of globalization. She is the author of Legitimating Life (2018) and Religion, Gender and Politics in Indonesia (2010).

 

Marc de Leeuw is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law and Justice at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His work engages with philosophical anthropology, law, bioscience, and AI. He is the author of Ricoeur’s Renewal of Philosophical Anthropology (2021), and co-editor of Personhood in the Age of Biolegality (2020).



Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Biolegality

  • Book Subtitle: A Critical Introduction

  • Authors: Sonja van Wichelen, Marc de Leeuw

  • Series Title: Biolegalities

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2024

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-99-8748-1Due: 01 June 2024

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-981-99-8751-1Due: 01 June 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-99-8749-8Due: 01 June 2024

  • Series ISSN: 3005-0227

  • Series E-ISSN: 3005-0235

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: LV, 213

  • Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations

Publish with us