Books by Paul Rabinow

Features a series of conversations about the past, present, and future of anthropological knowledge and practice. This book focuses on how anthropology understands its subject and how ethnographic research projects are designed and carried out.

Paul Rabinow continues his explorations of "a philosophic anthropology of the contemporary" by examining the work of German painter Gerhard Richter. Defining the contemporary as a moving ratio in which the modern becomes historical, Rabinow uses Richter's work to illustrate how meaning is created within the contemporary.

Drawing on the conceptual repertoires of Weber, Foucault, and Dewey, among others, the authors reflect on and experiment with how to give form to anthropological inquiry and its aftermath, with special attention to the ethical formation and ramifications of this mode of engagement.

Tells about the logical standards and forms that should guide ethical and experimental anthropology in the twenty-first century. This title draws on experiences from a set of anthropological experiments that investigated how and whether the human and biological sciences could be brought into a mutually enriching relationship.

This study of power/knowledge in France, from the 1830s through the 1930s, uses the tools of anthropology, philosophy, and cultural criticism to examine how the social environment was described. It aims to show how modernity was revealed in urban planning, architecture, and social legislation.

Concluding his search for anthropological concepts and practices appropriate to the twenty-first century, the author contends that to make sense of the contemporary anthropologists must invent new forms of inquiry. He begins with an extended rumination on what he gained from two of his formative mentors: Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz.

A Machine to Make a Future represents a remarkably original look at the present and possible future of biotechnology research in the wake of the mapping of the human genome. The central tenet of Celera Diagnostics--the California biotech company whose formative work during 2003 is the focus of the book--is that the emergent knowledge about the genome, with its profound implications for human health, can now be turned into a powerful diagnostic apparatus--one that will yield breakthrough diagnostic and therapeutic products (and, potentially, profit). Celera's efforts--assuming they succeed--may fundamentally reshape the fabric of how health and health care are understood, practiced, and managed. Presenting a series of interviews with all of the key players in Celera Diagnostics, Paul Rabinow and Talia Dan-Cohen open a fascinating window on the complexity of corporate scientific innovation. This marks a radical departure from other books on the biotech industry by chronicling the vicissitudes of a project during a finite time period, in the words of the actors themselves. Ultimately, the authors conclude, Celera Diagnostics is engaged in a future characterized not by geniuses and their celebrated discoveries but by a largely anonymous and widely distributed profusion of data and results--a "e;machine to make a future."e; In their new afterword, Rabinow and Dan-Cohen revisit Celera Diagnostics as its mighty machine grinds along, wondering, along with the scientists, "e;what constitutes success and what constitutes failure?"e; The pathos of the situation turns on how one poses the question as much as how one answers it.

Provides insights into the possibilities and limitations of collaboration, and diagnoses the micropolitics which effectively constrained the potential for mutual scientific flourishing. This title utilizes a real-world experience as a springboard for reflections on how the human and life sciences can and should transform each other.

"Can a country claim to have its own genetic material?" Rabinow demonstrates that the answer to this question is far from simple. The work is cross-disciplinary, marrying news events, science and philosophical analysis to see how past events influenced current thinking.

In Marking Time, Paul Rabinow presents his most recent reflections on the anthropology of the contemporary. Drawing richly on the work of Michel Foucault, John Dewey, Niklas Luhmann, and, most interestingly, German painter Gerhard Richter, Rabinow offers a set of conceptual tools for scholars examining cutting-edge practices in the life sciences, security, new media and art practices, and other emergent phenomena. Taking up topics that include bioethics, anger and competition among molecular biologists, the lessons of the Drosophila genome, the nature of ethnographic observation in radically new settings, and the moral landscape shared by scientists and anthropologists, Rabinow shows how anthropology remains relevant to contemporary debates. By turning abstract philosophical problems into real-world explorations and offering original insights, Marking Time is a landmark contribution to the continuing re-invention of anthropology and the human sciences.

In this landmark study, now celebrating thirty years in print, Paul Rabinow takes as his focus the fieldwork that anthropologists do. How valid is the process? To what extent do the cultural data become artifacts of the interaction between anthropologist and informants? Having first published a more standard ethnographic study about Morocco, Rabinow here describes a series of encounters with his informants in that study, from a French innkeeper clinging to the vestiges of a colonial past, to the rural descendants of a seventeenth-century saint. In a new preface Rabinow considers the thirty-year life of this remarkable book and his own distinguished career.

A behind-the-scenes account of the invention of the polymerase chain reaction, which transformed the practice and potential of molecular biology. This book explores the culture of biotechnology as it emerged at Cetus Corporation in the 1980s, looking at its scientific, social and economic elements.

The discipline of anthropology is, at its best, characterized by turbulence, self-examination, and inventiveness. In recent decades, new thinking and practice within the field has certainly reflected this pattern, as shown for example by numerous fruitful ventures into the "e;politics and poetics"e; of anthropology. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been given to the simple insight that anthropology is composed of claims, whether tacit or explicit, about anthropos and about logos--and the myriad ways in which these two Greek nouns have been, might be, and should be, connected. Anthropos Today represents a pathbreaking effort to fill this gap. Paul Rabinow brings together years of distinguished work in this magisterial volume that seeks to reinvigorate the human sciences. Specifically, he assembles a set of conceptual tools--"e;modern equipment"e;--to assess how intellectual work is currently conducted and how it might change. Anthropos Today crystallizes Rabinow's previous ethnographic inquiries into the production of truth about life in the world of biotechnology and genome mapping (and his invention of new ways of practicing this pursuit), and his findings on how new practices of life, labor, and language have emerged and been institutionalized. Here, Rabinow steps back from empirical research in order to reflect on the conceptual and ethical resources available today to conduct such inquiries. Drawing richly on Foucault and many other thinkers including Weber and Dewey, Rabinow concludes that a "e;contingent practice"e; must be developed that focuses on "e;events of problematization."e; Brilliantly synthesizing insights from American, French, and German traditions, he offers a lucid, deeply learned, original discussion of how one might best think about anthropos today.