Ethical issues & debates

This timely volume tackles the challenges of privacy in the digital sphere, addressing fundamental societal and structural issues from three perspectives: people, practices and politics. Experts from diverse fields provide a valuable contribution to key debates about privacy and data protection, surveillance capitalism and big tech companies.

Examining high profile cases including Kiriakou, Snowden, Foxley and Assange, this book offers crucial insights into the subject of whistleblowing.

This book explores how digital technologies shape our opinions and interactions, often in ways that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives and therefore can fuel polarization. Drawing on the ancient art of controversy, (arguing all sides of a case) it offers a way to revive public debate as a source of trust and legitimacy in our society.

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

Examining the data processes at the European Spallation Source facility in Sweden, this book sheds light on the often underestimated, yet essential, contributions of those involved in the design and development of data management systems.

Scientific and technical expertise, now largely understood as the ultimate source of authoritative knowledge, are vital to how our societies operate. This punchy introduction to thinking about science-society relations draws on research and concepts to argue for the importance of knowing.

This important book explores the dimensions, dynamics and implications of the emerging pandemic society, shedding new light on how pandemics are socially produced and, in turn, shape societies in governance, work and recreation, science and technology, education, and family life.

Examining the environmental impacts of digitalisation in smart cities, this book asks how we can reconcile the adoption of smart technologies into sustainable projects.

It traces the material and environmental costs of daily realities for smart cities and asks how promises are broken when cities become ‘smart.’

This book explores the experiences of people affected by Ireland's constitutional abortion ban. Through in-depth research and interviews, the author uncovers how the 8th Amendment led women and gestating people live their bodies as "future aborting bodies," and how the need to ‘prepare’ for crisis pregnancies shaped everyday practices.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

This book interrogates the promises of transhumanism, arguing that it is deeply entwined with capitalist ideology. It casts doubt on a utopian techno-capitalist narrative of unending progress and shows how an alternative ethical framework might foster a more inclusive future.

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

This book analyses the clashes between evidence-based medicine and the dynamics of an increasingly privatised fertility care industry. With a unique focus on "add-on" treatments, it reveals how these controversial treatments are now widespread and can border on hopemongering.

This book explores the idea of ownership in the realm of plant breeding, revealing how plants have been legally and physically transformed into property. It highlights the controversial aspects in the process of turning seeds, plants and genes into property and how this endangers the viability of the seed industry.