Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine

Isabelle Dussauge is a researcher at the Center for Gender Research at the University of Uppsala. Her primary research interests are in the science and politics of the body, at the intersection of science and technology studies, gender studies, and the history of medicine. She has worked with visualization in medicine; the early computerization of health care; and the place of the brain in contemporary culture. She is currently concluding the research project entitled "Brain Desires ", a critical inquiry into the contemporary neurosciences of sexuality and pleasure. Claes-Fredrik Helgesson is professor in Technology and Social Change at Linkoping University, Sweden. His research interest concerns the intertwining of economic organising, science and technology. The theoretical inspiration comes primarily from economic sociology and social studies of science and technology (STS). His current project "Trials of Value " together with Francis Lee, investigates the designing of controlled medical experiments as a site where scientific, medical and economic values at play when establishing what knowledge is worth pursuing. Helgesson is co-founder and co-editor of Valuation Studies, a new open access journal, which published its first issue in spring 2013. Francis Lee is assistant professor at the Department of Thematic Studies - Technology and Social Change at Linko?ping University, Sweden. His primary research interests are in the practices, politics and technologies of knowledge. His work has dealt with the valuation of knowledge in the biosciences, epistemic standards in education, and exclusion in sociotechnical processes. He is currently studying research design as a valuation of biomedical knowledge in the project "Trials of Value" with C-F Helgesson.

People's and societies' values arent fixed and innate. They are forged in practice,in every day settings, and often as the result of conflict. This important new book focusses on exactly how this happens.

• PART I: CONFLICTED "PUBLIC" VALUES; PART II: MARKETS AS CARERS FOR HEALTH; PART III: VALUING HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN BODIES; PART IV: VALUATIONS AND KNOWLEDGE