Event overview
Gail Davies, lecturer in Geography at UCL, delivers a seminar in the CSISP "What is Medicine?" series
This paper looks at the relationship between changing understandings of human and animal behaviour as they are enmeshed in and emerge from the complex contexts of contemporary behavioural genetics. Mice models, and more recently genetically altered mice, have played a critical role in understanding human affective disorders, linking animal models, laboratory experimentation and therapeutic interventions. This paper explores the achievement of these links, but also the challenges to them. Attention to the site of the laboratory reveals the contingencies and human capabilities intricately involved in the performance of such experiments, meaning they can be difficult to standardize and repeat. Arguments about environmental enrichment reveal different interpretations of animal behaviour, challenging the external validity of animal models. Such attention suggests the material practices and scientific arguments linking human diseases and the genetically modified mice are ultimately circular and the meanings of animal behaviour remain ambiguous. Yet something is clearly being transformed in these circulations. Utilising the theoretical insights from Agamben and Latour, I suggest this is our understandings of both animal and human nature, and the relationship between the two.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 6 May 2009 | 6:00pm |
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