Transhumanisms and Biotechnologies in Consumer Society

Jennifer Takhar is Associate Professor of Marketing and Communication at ISG Business School, Paris. Her research expertise includes gamete commodification, transhumanism and the marketing and advertising of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in digital spaces. Her work is attentive to the rhetorical and literary strategies used to persuade consumers.Rika Houston is Professor of Marketing at California State University, Los Angeles, where she also serves as Faculty Director of Community Engagement for the Center for Engagement, Service, and the Public Good. Her research explores gender and biotechnology in consumer culture, transformative consumer research, and sustainability.Nikhilesh Dholakia is Professor Emeritus at the University of Rhode Island (URI), and Founding Co-editor of Markets, Globalization and Development Review. Dr. Dholakia's research deals with globalization, technology, innovation, market processes, and consumer culture. His current work focuses on global, social and cultural aspects of technologies and media.

• Introduction: Live very long and prosper? Transhumanist visions and ambitions in 2021 and beyond… 1. Transhumanism in speculative fiction 2. An IVF survivor unravels fertility industry narratives 3. IVF survivorship, the IVF memoir and reproductive activism 4. Social inequalities, reproductive bodies, and technological interventions 5. Perfecting or selecting? When ‘kinds of children’ are the objective 6. The Promethean biohacker: on consumer biohacking as a labour of love 7. Reproduction as consumption: unravelling the sociological shaping of reproductive tourism market in China 8. Dead metaphors and responsibilised bodies-in-transition: the implications of medical metaphors for understanding the consumption of preventative healthcare 9. Wearable technologies, brand community and the growth of a transhumanist vision