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This volume sheds light on the social and cultural transformations that accompanied the Covid-19 crisis by looking at health and biopolitics from a philosophical and literary perspective. The biopolitical measures taken globally in response to the crisis have led to previously unheard-of restrictions in liberal societies, resulting in deep and potentially lasting transformations both in social structures and interpersonal relationships. Many researchers have addressed the Covid-19 crisis as a political or epidemiological challenge, but few have paid sufficient attention to the culturally specific reactions and cultural representations of the human beings at the centre of events. Literary analyses capture this human component and give insights into different reactions to, and protests against, the health-political measures addressing the crisis. This book puts the notion of biopolitics, first extensively theorised in the 1970s, to work in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, and uses literary case studies as starting points for discussions of contemporary politics, media, and legal and surveillance regimes. It brings together eleven scholars from six countries with the shared aim of combining literary and philosophical expertise to create a better understanding of the changes in society and political attitudes induced by the ongoing pandemic.

Life in Canada is marked, celebrated, enjoyed, and dreaded in ways that respond specifically to the seasons. Sociological thinking allows people to ask questions about things that may otherwise be taken for granted. Thinking about the seasons sociologically opens up a unique perspective for studying and understanding social life. Each chapter in this collection approaches the seasons and the passage of time as a way to explore issues of sociological interest. The authors use seasonality as a device that can bridge, in fascinating ways, small-scale interpersonal interactions and large formal institutional structures. These contemporary, Canadian case studies are wide-ranging and include analyses of pumpkin spice lattes, policing in schools, law and colonialism, summer cottages, seasonal affective disorder, New Year's resolutions, Vaisakhi celebrations, and more. Seasonal Sociology offers provocative new ways of thinking about the nature of our collective lives.

This is the first transnational history of IVF and assisted reproduction. It is a key text for scholars and students in social science, history, science and technology studies (STS), cultural studies, and gender and sexuality studies, and a resource for journalists, policymakers, and anyone interested in assisted reproduction. IVF was seen as revolutionary in 1978 when the first two IVF babies were born, in the UK and India. Assisted reproduction has now contributed to the birth of around ten million people. The book traces the work of IVF teams as they developed new techniques and laid the foundations of a multi-billion-dollar industry. It analyses the changing definitions and experience of infertility, the markets for eggs and children through surrogacy, cross-border reproductive treatment, and the impact of regulation. Using interviews with leading IVF figures, archives, media reports, and the latest science, it is a vital addition to the field of reproduction studies. ‘This pathbreaking account of the global forces behind the rapid rise of the fertility industry is the first to offer such a truly comprehensive overview of this hugely important topic.'—Sarah Franklin, Chair of Sociology, University of Cambridge ‘In this compelling overview of one of the most significant technological and social interventions ever developed, the cultural and scientific imaginaries of assisted reproduction meet the obdurate histories of laboratory experiments, biological materials, and personal quests. It is an indispensable read for anyone interested in IVF and assisted reproduction.'—Andrea Whittaker, Professor of Anthropology, Monash University

Drawing on Australian and comparative case studies, this volume reconceptualises non-metropolitan creative economies through the ‘qualities of place'.This book examines the agricultural and gastronomic cultures surrounding ‘native'foods, coastal sculpture festivals, universities and regional communities, wine in regional Australia and Canada, the creative systems of the Hunter Valley, musicians in ‘outback'settings, Fab Labs as alternatives to clusters, cinema and the cultivation of ‘authentic'landscapes, and tensions between the ‘representational'and ‘non-representational'in the cultural economies of the Blue Mountains. What emerges is a picture of rural and regional places as more than the ‘other'of metropolitan creative cities. Place itself is shown to embody affordances, unique institutional structures and the invisible threads that ‘hold communities together'.If, in the wake of the publication of Florida's Rise of the Creative Class, creative industries models tended to emphasize ‘big cities'and the spatial-cum-cultural imaginaries of the ‘Global North', recent research and policy discourses – especially, in the Australian context – have paid greater attention to ‘small cities', rural and remote creativity. This collection will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in creative industries, urban and regional studies, sociology, geography and cultural planning.