Contact

Send us your feedback

Thank you for your feedback. An email has been sent to the ESRC support team.

An error occured whilst sending your feedback. Please review the problems below.

Brain, Self and Society: The Social and Political Implications of the New Brain Sciences

  • Start date: 01 September 2007
  • End date: 30 November 2010

This research programme evaluates the hypothesis that 'the new brain sciences' – molecular neuroscience, psychiatric genetics, brain imaging, psychopharmaceuticals; novel neurotechnologies – are having as significant a social, political and personal impact in the twenty first century as psychological conceptions of personhood had for the twentieth century. Through historical research, documentary analysis, interviews and case studies of changing approaches to mental distress, developments in the courtroom and criminal justice system, and in the security apparatus, the research will examine the extent to which our ways of thinking about and acting on ourselves are being reshaped, and with what consequences. It maps the extent to which the new brain sciences are changing forms of professional authority, reconfiguring practices of control and impacting on the military and defence apparatus. It analyses the effects of these developments on the divisions of the normal and the pathological, on distinctions between therapy, reform, normalisation and enhancement, and on ideas of risk management, susceptibility and prevention in psychiatry and elsewhere. And it explores the consequences of these developments for individual identity and subjectivity – for our very ideas of what we are as human beings.

Grant holder

Professor Nikolas Rose

Programme name

None

Co - applicants

None

Grant amount

£516,096.82

Grant reference

RES-051-27-0194

Institution

London School of Economics & Pol Sci

Discipline

Sociology

Grant type

Fellowship