Book Review: Our Bodies, Our Selves: The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century

June 7, 2007

Those wishing to orient themselves in today’s vast landscape of biomedical advances may want to consult The Politics of Life Itself, a study of 21st-century biomedicine by sociologist Nikolas Rose. The book provides a comprehensive description of the latest biological and medical interventions in human life. Rose proposes to steer a course between the negativity of social critics and the naive enthusiasm of scientific puffery. Instead, he promises a dry-eyed assessment of our new biomedical capacities to wield power and to shape the way we relate to ourselves as “somatic individuals.” (American Scientist Online)