Del i serien Experimental Futures

Connector

Nyhet

Living with Experimental Neuroprosthetics

Häftad, Engelska, 2026

AvAlexandra Middleton

409 kr

Kommande

In The Connector, Alexandra Middleton examines how the frontiers of experimental medical science are always the everyday lived experiences for patients and their families and communities. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews conducted in Swedish labs and clinics that develop neuromusculoskeletal protheses, as well as in the homes of patients enrolled in clinical trials as they live with these new forms of prosthetics, Middleton shows how patients’ sensory experiences and domestic worlds become key spaces of scientific knowledge production that extend well beyond their visits to the lab. Through storytelling that centers the patients’ embodied knowledge and labor, along with the scientists who work closely with them, Middleton depicts how “connection” entails inhabiting the liminal space between ideation and materialization, a space punctuated not only by breakthroughs and breakdowns, but the slow work of the everyday. The Connector critically examines where biomedical innovation, scientific discovery, and the “cutting edge” come from in ways that foreground the importance of the domestic spaces in which experimental science take place.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-05-12
Mått152 x 229 x 17 mm
Vikt445 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieExperimental Futures
Antal sidor290
FörlagDuke University Press
ISBN9781478038672

Tillhör följande kategorier

Antropologi inom Samhälle och politik
Biomedicinsk teknik inom Medicin
Biovetenskap inom Naturvetenskap och teknik
Biokemisk teknik inom Naturvetenskap och teknik

Prelude: Only a Machine ixIntroduction 1Part I. Producing and Sustaining a Connector1. Domestic Lived Science 212. Experimental Labor 493. The Fourth Bottleneck 77Interlude 1. Limited Edition 99Part II. Living and Dwelling with a Connector4. Phantom Signals 1075. Reverse-Engineering Touch 1516. Sense Making; Meaning Making 151Interlude 2. Lunar Thai 1717. Flickering Embodiments 1758. Breakdown 207Conclusion 225Epilogue 235Acknowledgments 237Notes 243References 249Index 267

“In this beautifully written study, Middleton offers a vivid account of experimental limb replacement. An empathetic guide, she tacks expertly between a Swedish bioengineering lab and the quotidian, home-based lives of half a dozen extraordinary patients who have survived traumatically severe limb injury and loss. The Connector proffers a superb melding of ethnographic and STS skill, insight, compassion, and wisdom.”—Lesley A. Sharp, Barbara C. And Helen C. Josefsberg '30 Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University“The Connector is an ethnographic masterpiece. Middleton’s bold rethinking of brain-science enigmas forges revelatory connections among the injured, neuro-prosthetics, and the intimate frontiers of human-machine life at home.”—Adriana Petryna, author of Horizon Work: At the Edges of Knowledge in an Age of Runaway Climate Change