Book Review-Animals as Biotechnology: Ethics, Sustainability and Critical Animal Studies

Review Introduction:

"Richard Twine’s Animals as Biotechnology, situated at the nexus of a vast array of academic discourses and practices—biology, genomics, genetics, environmental studies, agriculture, medicine, animals studies, bioethics, and global law—seeks to install a reflexive posthumanism into the field of sociology, thus extending the range of the discipline’s focus beyond human life (Twine himself is a sociologist). That, at least, is a fair enough overview of Twine’s amazingly complex and comprehensive book. To accomplish this, Twine focuses on biotechnology (put broadly, the genetic manipulation of life) and its applications in animal agriculture. He contends that posthumanist discourses pressure the ethical issues involved in scientific disciplines but nevertheless have little policy influence outside of the confines of whatever specialized academic field to which they happen to belong."

"Scientific biotechnological endeavors, on the other hand, tend to have a great deal of political influence without attending to the ethical implications of the work. For Twine, this means the humanities, while doing valuable work, need to actively engage in hard scientific debates. His solution is that we need to develop the maturating field of critical animal studies (Twine uses “reflexive posthumanism” and “critical animal studies” interchangeably) as a critique of global biotechnological advancements."

"Twine’s book, in other words, not only intervenes in the busy academic intersections of the humanities and the sciences but also undertakes no less than to install a supple ethical awareness within scientific disciplines that have tangible biopolitical effects on the world of humans and animals."