Undergraduate Module Descriptor

POL3247: Politics of Biology

This module descriptor refers to the 2021/2 academic year.

Module Aims

This module aims to:

  • Introduce you to the interplay between how we understand the living world and how we relate to each other in society;
  • Expand your awareness of the various and complex relations between political ideology, social power, science, and values;
  • Provide you with some of the critical tools needed to negotiate these relations in the modern world;
  • Encourage independent research into contemporary and historical issues that can be examined using the perspectives introduced by the module.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

This module's assessment will evaluate your achievement of the ILOs listed here – you will see reference to these ILO numbers in the details of the assessment for this module.
On successfully completing the programme you will be able to:
Module-Specific Skills1. Demonstrate critical awareness of the complex relations between political ideology, social power, science, and values.
2. Apply perspectives introduced in the module to a variety of contemporary or historical debates that bring politics and biology into conversation with each other.
Discipline-Specific Skills3. Critically reflect on the political and social ramifications of changing understandings of science.
4. Display good awareness of a range of conceptual frameworks that can be used to understand the complex and changing interaction between science and society.
Personal and Key Skills5. Demonstrate awareness of the multiple ways in which scientific knowledge can be interpreted and used.
6. Demonstrate awareness of mutual interaction between knowledge and social relations/power.
7. Study independently and manage time and assessment deadlines effectively.
8. Communicate effectively in speech and writing.
9. Demonstrate research and analytical skills through seminar discussions and module assessments.
10. Demonstrate proficiency in the use of the internet, online journal databases, and other IT resources for the purposes of seminar and assessment preparation.

Indicative Reading List

This reading list is indicative - i.e. it provides an idea of texts that may be useful to you on this module, but it is not considered to be a confirmed or compulsory reading list for this module.

Meloni, M. (2016) Political Biology: Science and Social Values in Human Heredity from Eugenics to Epigenetics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan)

Lewontin, R. (1991) Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA (New York: Harper Collins)

Nelkin, D. & Lindee, M. S. (1995) The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co.)

Latour, B. (2004) Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences Into Democracy (Harvard University Press)

Nayar, P. K. (2014) Posthumanism (Polity Press)

Mills, C. (2018) Biopolitics (Abingdon: Routledge)

Barker, G. (2015) Beyond Biofatalism: Human Nature for an Evolving World (New York: Columbia University Press)

Lewens, T. (2015) The Biological Foundations of Bioethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Habermas, J. (2003) The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge: Polity Press)

Smith, D. L. (ed.) (2017) How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

Oyama, S. (2000b) Evolution’s Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide (Durham, NC.: Duke University Press)

Kevles, D. J. & Hood, L. (eds.) (1992) The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press)

Hubbard, R. (1990) ‘The Political Nature of “Human Nature”’, in Rhode, D. L. (ed.) Theoretical Perspectives on Sexual Difference (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 63-73

Lloyd, E. A. (2008) ‘Normality and Variation: The Human Genome Project and the Ideal Human Type’, in Lloyd, E. A., Science, Evolution and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 133-147

Smith, D. L. (2016) ‘Paradoxes of Dehumanization’. Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 42 (No. 2), pp. 416-443