ABSTRACT
As the focus of the natural sciences shifted from cellular to molecular levels over the last half of the twentieth century, the question ‘What is life?’ has increasingly been raised. Rose (2007: 6-7) recently posited a parallel epistemic shift in biomedicine from the clinical gaze to the molecular gaze such that ‘we are inhabiting an emergent form of life’. Through biomedicine, molecularisation is transforming what Foucault called ‘the conditions of possibility’ for how life can and should be lived. The emergent biomedical molecular gaze offers possibilities of changing bios – ‘life itself’ – especially, but not only, through genetics and genomics. These new biomedical practices are increasingly transforming people’s bodies, identities and lives. Historically, medicalisation has extended the legitimate jurisdiction of medicine into
new areas of human life (Conrad 2000, 2007). Today biomedicalisation, relying more deeply on the biosciences, not only further extends but also reconstitutes biomedicine through technoscientific innovations often perceived as ‘imperative’ (Clarke et al. 2003, 2009). Genetics and genomics are increasingly major mechanisms of biomedicalisation. Consequently, biomedicalisation, next described in more detail, provides an exceptionally useful framework through which to read this Handbook.
