In "Mobile Technology and Place", an edited collection in the Routledge’s Studies in New Media and Cyberculture series, Rowan Wilken and Gerard Goggin outline and explore how place is conceptualised in a world increasingly influenced by mobile technology. Including chapters written by scholars from a wealth of social and cultural fields, the book leads the way in an emerging research area. It would be no surprise to see this book becoming an introductory classic in the field in the years to come.

Based on my reading of Kelly Happe’s The Material Gene, the epigenetic turn may be less paradigm-shifting than it appears. In this ground-breaking book Happe questions whether any science concerned with race and genomics will not reinscribe problematic notions of race.

Biotechnology and the post-Fordist regime of accumulation present a fundamental challenge to Marxist conceptions of the valorization of labor—a challenge that requires empirically grounded and theoretically creative engagement. Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby provide such a contribution in their book Clinical Labor.

Tom Koch provides a critical and historically contextualized account of how the contemporary discipline of bioethics evolved in response to the demand for philosophical guidance for physicians and researchers. He both identifies inconsistencies in the interpretation of the philosophical roots of bioethics and critically deconstructs the “myths of origin” that have shaped this evolution.

For Mirowski, the U.S. Government’s changing management of scientific research, the emergence of intellectual property as the pinnacle of university life, and the global outsourcing of research capacity, have not only harmed academia but also weakened America’s hegemonic grip.