The Origins of Sociable Life: Evolution After Science Studies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. After War

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 1-20

3. Plenty of Room at the Bottom: Thinking Bacteria

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 21-57

4. Evolutionary Theory and Its Discontents

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 58-76

5. Microontologies of Self

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 77-90

6. Microontologies of Sex

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 91-115

7. Microontologies of Environment

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 116-132

8. Eating Well, Surviving Humanism

   • Myra J. Hird

   Pages 133-143

9. Back Matter

   Pages 144-202

   PDF

This ambitious book considers social scientific topics such as identity, community, sexual difference, self, and ecology from a microbial perspective. Harnessing research and evidence from earth systems science and microbiology, and particularly focusing on symbiosis and symbiogenesis, the book argues for the development of a microontology of life.

• biology
• community
• development
• ecology
• evolution
• identity
• science
• science studies
• Sex

'Myra J. Hird provides a highly engaging and energetic account of contemporary scientific debates about microbes, detailing how they challenge mainstream understandings of evolution, identity, sex and ecology. Most importantly, she articulates why social scientists, feminists and queer theorists should pay careful attention to our inextricable entanglements with the microcosmos. Her enthusiasm for her subject matter is infectious.' - Celia Roberts, Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, UK

'This book is an exciting and inviting account of the messy entanglements and inventions of the world's tiny beings, those entities that shape scale upon scale of sociable living for all on the earth. Myra Hird's book is richly researched and beautifully written, and it fulfills my appetite for an account of biology and biologists to live with and for. Hird shows how "thinking with microorganisms"-and with their scientists - can be a fundamental practice for living well in multispecies, mortal worlds.'

- Donna Haraway, Distinguished Professor, History of Consciousness Department, UC Santa Cruz, USA

• Queen’s University, Canada

  Myra J. Hird

MYRA J. HIRD is Professor and Queen's National Scholar at Queen's University, Canada. Her research and teaching interests span the areas of science studies, health, the ontology and epistemology of sexual difference, sexuality, ethics and social justice, violence, disability studies, feminist theory and queer theory. She is the author of Sociology of Science: A Critical Canadian Introduction, Sex, Gender and Science and Engendering Violence: From Childhood to Adulthood, as well as three co-edited collections, including Queering the (Non-)Human, Questioning Sociology: Canadian Perspectives and Sociology for the Asking.

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