Transhumanism as a New Social Movement

This book explores the social construction and performance of Technological Human Enhancement Advocacy through ethnographically inspired participant observation across a range of sites. It argues that advocacy efforts surrounding technological human enhancement share the feature of Techno-centrism- an object-level belief embedded in the material present while simultaneously future-oriented and ideational. This purposive neo-dualism blurring ' real' and ' imagined' futures satisfies the materialist grounding associated with the scientific worldview, while also granting extended licence to visions for technology as an enabler of forward-facing action-including revivifying humanist ideals associated with the modernisation project. While James Michael MacFarlane's work appears most pronounced in transhumanism - where it is acted-out in extreme, almost hyperbolic ways-it reflects deep-seeded concerns around the future of science, technology and human self-identity in the new millennium. Far from being new, these emerging social forms capture unresolved ambivalences which have long cast a shadow over late-modern society and culture.