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  Judy Wajcman               

Technofeminism

Judy Wajcman

abstract

Do technologies have sex? Until recently popular stereotypes have associated technology strongly with masculinity. But in the new digital age, wired women are populating cyberspace and embracing technological change. The cyborg figure has fired the feminist imagination as an icon of women's power and freedom from biological sex difference. What does the new global information society - interconnected, genetically engineered, digitally designed, remotely controlled - hold for women? While most commentators assert that everything in the digital future will be different, how true is this for the social relations of gender?


This timely and engaging book argues that technoscientific advances are radically transforming the woman-machine relationship. However, it is feminist politics rather than the technologies themselves that make the difference. TechnoFeminism fuses the visionary insights of cyberfeminism with a materialist analysis of the sexual politics of technology. Drawing on new perspectives in postmodernism, feminist theory and science and technology studies, Judy Wajcman explores the ways in which technologies are gendered both in their design and use. At the same time, she shows how our very subjectivity is shaped by the technoscientific culture of the world we inhabit. This book provides a lucid, accessible and succinct interpretation of some of the most complex and urgent debates of our times and will appeal to students in sociology, women's studies, cultural studies, and science and technology studies.


Judy Wajcman is Professor of Sociology at the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, and a Centennial Professor in the Gender Institute and Sociology, London School of Economics.

keywords

cyberfeminism, cyberspace, feminist, information society, new digital age, sexual technology, technoscientific culture, women's studies

catalogue card

Title: Technofeminism
Author: Judy Wajcman
Publication: Cambridge, UK; Oxford: Polity Press, 2004
Subjects: Technology-Social aspects, feminism, feminist theory, sexual role
ISBN: 0-7456-3043-X (cart.)

index

Preface

Introduction: Feminist Utopia or Dystopia?
1 Male Designs on Technology
From Access to Equito
Science as Ideology
Technology as Patriarcal
Sex, Class and Technology

2 Technoscience Reconfigured
Beyond Technological Determinism
From Gender-Blind to Gender-Aware
Combining Feminist and Technology Studies

3 Virtual Cender
Networked Community
Cyberfeminism: 'The clitoris is a direct line to the matrix'
Performing Gender in Cyberspace
Technology as Freedom

4 The Cyborg Solution
Embracing Science and Technology
From Man of Science to FemaleMan
OncoMouse^TM: Technologizing Life and Reprogramming Nature
Send in the Cyborgs

5 Metaphor and Materiality
Changing Technologies, Changing Subjectivities
Towards Technofeminism
Sociotechnical Practices: Expertise and Agency

Notes
Index