Paul Martins
Biographic Data
| ID | 3583137 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Paul Martins |
| GIVEN NAMES | Paul |
| FAMILY NAME | Martins |
| SIGNATURE | MARTINS P |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0366-9271 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 716 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 55 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1931 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Promises past and future - Gene therapy and the actualisation of future expectations
Why is the pharmaceutical industry investing in targeted therapies? The emergence of “premium pharma”
Recent decades have witnessed a major transformation in biomedical knowledge production, framed as the rise of personalized, precision, or stratified medicine. While social scientists have explored the implications for disease classification, patienthood, datafication and governance, the central role of the pharmaceutical industry in shaping this new biomedical paradigm remains under-examined. This paper addresses this gap by analyzing the indust…
Definitions and Measurement Tools for Assessing Parental Reactions to LGB People Coming Out: A Critical Review
Parental responses to young people's coming out as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) are a crucial experience in identity formation and subsequent mental health outcomes. However, how parents react to coming out varies and remains relatively imprecise in the literature. The aim of the present critical review was to explore and discuss the different definitions and measurement tools used in studies assessing perceived parental reactions to the coming…
Tailing Time, And: Shlep, And: Go Boom!, And: Soiled Territory
The challenge of institutionalised complicity: Researching the pharmaceutical industry in the era of impact and engagement
The pharmaceutical industry plays a central role in the production of the drugs we use to treat most illnesses. It is immensely powerful and has received sustained attention from sociologists of health and illness, who have provided a critique of its influence and sometimes unethical behaviour. However, in recent years, funders are increasingly expecting researchers to engage and collaborate with stakeholders, including industry. This raises impo…
The ratio of vision to data: Promoting emergent science and technologies through promissory regulation, the case of the FDA and personalised medicine
Pharmacogenetic tests provide genetic data to tailor drug treatment and were widely predicted to be one of the first fruits of the Human Genome Project. In the mid‐2000s, the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) became an advocate for pharmacogenetic testing, but its efforts to build a market for this new technology brought the agency into dispute with other regulatory actors over the type of evidence needed for the adoption of pharmacogenetic …
Thinking the unthinkable: How Did Human Germline Genome Editing Become Ethically Acceptable
Two major reports in the UK and USA have recently sanctioned as ethically acceptable genome editing of future generations for the treatment of serious rare inherited conditions. This marks an important turning point in the application of recombinant DNA techniques to humans. The central question this paper addresses is how did it became possible for human genetic engineering (HGE) of future generations to move from an illegitimate idea associated…
Genome editing: The dynamics of continuity, convergence, and change in the engineering of life
Genome editing enables very accurate alterations to DNA. It promises profound and potentially disruptive changes in healthcare, agriculture, industry, and the environment. This paper presents a multidisciplinary analysis of the contemporary development of genome editing and the tension between continuity and change. It draws on the idea that actors involved in innovation are guided by “sociotechnical regimes” composed of practices, institutions, …
Honour of Kings as Chinese popular heritage: Contesting authorized history in a mobile game
This article examines how users on social media responded to state criticism of the representation of Chinese historical characters in the popular Tencent mobile game Honour of Kings. The game's usage of historical characters and the ensuing debate and criticism are analysed as 'popular heritage'. A qualitative content analysis identifies several categories in the discussion of this game on the Q & A website Zhihu (知乎). The article discusses thes…
Creating Mourning Rituals for the Individual
Science and the politics of openness: Here be monsters
examines the collaborations between scientists and the entertainment industry.He is currently writing the book Indecent Science, which will explore the historic interactions between science, religion and movie censorship.Adam Kokotovich is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Minnesota, studying invasive-species risk assessment and management.An interdisciplinary social scientist, he is interested in highlighting and opening to …
Race, Colonial History and National Identity: Resident Evil 5 as a Japanese Game
Resident Evil 5 is a zombie game made by Capcom, featuring a White American protagonist and set in Africa. This article argues that approaching this as a Japanese game reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missed if this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybrid racial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness and Whiteness, where these terms a…
Have we seen the geneticisation of society? Expectations and evidence
Abby Lippman's geneticisation thesis, of the early 1990s, argued and anticipated that with the rise of genetics, increasing areas of social and health related activities would come to be understood and defined in genetic terms leading to major changes in society, medicine and health care. We review the considerable literature on geneticisation and consider how the concept stands both theoretically and empirically across scientific, clinical, popu…
Five rules of thumb for post-Elsi interdisciplinary collaborations
In this paper we identify five rules of thumb for interdisciplinary collaboration across the natural and social sciences. We link these to efforts to move away from the ‘ethical, legal and social issues’ framework of interdisciplinarity and towards a post-ELSI collaborative space. It is in trying to open up such a space that we identify the need for: collaborative experimentation, taking risks, collaborative reflexivity, opening-up discussions of…
The biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues
Biology: Scott and Marshall's authoritative and bestselling Dictionary of Sociology (2009) has no entry for it.There are entries for Wilfred Bion, the Kleinian psychoanalyst, or for sociometry, the almost-forgotten method of measuring social relationships.In place of biology, we find an entry for 'biological reductionism, or biologism', a pejorative term indicating the ideology of the deterministic application of biological findings to society.To…
Strategies to Support the Interests of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Commercial Development of Gourmet Bush Food Products
Indigenous groups and individuals may have different needs and aspirations in relation to their local plant foods ("bush foods"). Interests may reflect totemic relationships, customary rights and duties, social positions, political and economic motivations, and personal capacities. This article uses a systems method to identify strategies to support the diverse interests of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the commerci…
The Biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues
Special Issue: Games and Gaming in China
Taking Roles in Interdisciplinary Collaborations: Reflections on Working in Post-Elsi Spaces in the UK Synthetic Biology Community
Based on criticism of the “ethical, legal and social implications” (ELSI) paradigm, researchers in science and technology studies (STS) have begun to create and move into “post-ELSI” spaces. In this paper, we pool our experiences of working towards collaborative practices with colleagues in engineering and science disciplines in the field of synthetic biology. We identify a number of different roles that we have taken, been assumed to take, or ha…
The changing brain: Neuroscience and the enduring import of everyday experience
Discourses of ‘neuroplasticity’ have become increasingly apparent in the neurosciences and wider society. These connect with broader narratives about the ‘changing brain’ throughout the life-course. Here, we explore their presence in the talk of a range of publics. Their presence is indicative of how novel neuroscience is accepted, or not, by our participants. In particular, we suggest that any acceptance of the science relates to their personal …
Commercialising neurofutures: Promissory economies, value creation and the making of a new industry
Pharmaceuticals and society: Power, promises and prospects
Constructing notions of healthcare productivity: The Call for a New Professionalism
Improving performance is an imperative for most healthcare systems in industrialised countries. This article considers one such system, the UK's National Health Service (NHS). Recent NHS reforms and strategies have advocated improved healthcare productivity as a fundamental objective of policy and professional work. This article explores the construction of productivity in contemporary NHS discourse, analysing it via the Foucauldian concept of go…
Mapping the new molecular landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA itself. The field is rapidly growing and being widely promoted, attracting attention in diverse arenas. These include those of the social sciences, where some researchers have been encouraged by the resonance between imaginaries of development within epigenetics and social theory. Yet, sustained attention from science and technology studies (…
Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: A commentary on Bell and Figert (2012)
The pharmaceuticalisation of society? A framework for analysis
Drawing on insights from both medical sociology and science and technology studies this article provides a critical analysis of the nature and status of pharmaceuticalisation in terms of the following key dimensions and dynamics: (i) the redefinition or reconfiguration of health 'problems' as having a pharmaceutical solution; (ii) changing forms of governance; (iii) mediation; (iv) the creation of new techno-social identities and the mobilisation…
Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital
Food Taboos, Diet, and Hunting Strategy: The Adaptation to Animals in Amazon Cultural Ecology [and Comments and Reply]
The issue of food prohibitions on such Amazonian game animals as deer is examined from an ecological perspective, in contrast to previous symbolic or structuralist views on this subject. Examined in conjunction with settlement pattern, technology, animal behavior, and habitat productivity, which together determine the food-extraction potential of a population, the avoidance of certain inherently edible species by characterizing them as inebible i…
The Drugs Don't Work: Expectations and the Shaping of Pharmacogenetics
This article examines one particular set of technologies arising from developments in human genetics, those aimed at improving the targeting, design and use of conventional small molecule drugs-pharmacogenetics. Much of the debate about the applications and consequences of pharmacogenetics has been highly speculative, since little or no working technology is yet on the market. This article provides a novel analysis of the development of pharmacog…
Mapping the new molecular landscape: Social Dimensions of Epigenetics
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA itself. The field is rapidly growing and being widely promoted, attracting attention in diverse arenas. These include those of the social sciences, where some researchers have been encouraged by the resonance between imaginaries of development within epigenetics and social theory. Yet, sustained attention from science and technology studies (…
Constituting neurologic subjects: Neuroscience, subjectivity and the mundane significance of the brain
Capitalizing hope: The Commercial Development of Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cell Banking
The creation of commercial cord blood banks rests on the promise of stem cell based regenerative medicine and marks the capitalization of human tissues within a future-oriented "regime of hope". This paper will present data from a survey of the international cord blood banking industry and will explore: (a) the way firms seek to commercialize cord blood as a new set of commodities; (b) the expectations and moral economy that are being constructed…
From Bedside to Bench? Communities of Promise, Translational Research and the Making of Blood Stem Cells
Contemporary science and technology policy is concerned with improving the diffusion of knowledge from basic science into the clinic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the emerging field of Regenerative Medicine. In this paper we critically explore the changing relationships between the bench and the bedside through the development of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). In the history of HSCs over a 50-year period, the relationship between basi…
The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks
As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize th…
Have we seen the geneticisation of society? Expectations and evidence
Abby Lippman's geneticisation thesis, of the early 1990s, argued and anticipated that with the rise of genetics, increasing areas of social and health related activities would come to be understood and defined in genetic terms leading to major changes in society, medicine and health care. We review the considerable literature on geneticisation and consider how the concept stands both theoretically and empirically across scientific, clinical, popu…
The Promissory Pasts of Blood Stem Cells
The biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues
Biology: Scott and Marshall's authoritative and bestselling Dictionary of Sociology (2009) has no entry for it.There are entries for Wilfred Bion, the Kleinian psychoanalyst, or for sociometry, the almost-forgotten method of measuring social relationships.In place of biology, we find an entry for 'biological reductionism, or biologism', a pejorative term indicating the ideology of the deterministic application of biological findings to society.To…
Modafinil in the media: Metaphors, medicalisation and the body
The Mass Media as Sentinel: Why Bad News About Issues is Good News for Participation
This article argues that negative news coverage of politically relevant social issues stimulates political participation by shaping citizen awareness of collective problems and interest in politics. By drawing citizen attention to social problems that government may attend to, the press acts as a sentinel for the mass public, cuing them to periods when participation is more important. Drawing on an analysis of the 1974 National Election Study in …
A genetic future for coronary heart disease
This paper is concerned with changing conceptions of genetic disease. It is based on an analysis of biomedical literature and focuses on the treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD) in four published commentary papers. The aim of this analysis is to explore the ways in which CHD is constructed as genetic and the place of genetic discourses in the wider set of ideas that circulate about the disease. This analysis is then used to consider some of …
The Biosocial: Sociological Themes and Issues
Pharmaceuticals and society: Power, promises and prospects
Constructing notions of healthcare productivity: The Call for a New Professionalism
Improving performance is an imperative for most healthcare systems in industrialised countries. This article considers one such system, the UK's National Health Service (NHS). Recent NHS reforms and strategies have advocated improved healthcare productivity as a fundamental objective of policy and professional work. This article explores the construction of productivity in contemporary NHS discourse, analysing it via the Foucauldian concept of go…
Unity and Diversity in American Political Culture: An Exploratory Study of the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity
Drawing on participant observation and quantitative analysis, this paper investigates the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity, a series of local conversation projects organized by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1995 and 1996. After linking this program to debates about American political culture, the paper analyzes the observational and survey data in light of five hypotheses about the conversations. The convers…
Biobanks, national identity and imagined communities: The case of UK biobank
Race, Colonial History and National Identity: Resident Evil 5 as a Japanese Game
Resident Evil 5 is a zombie game made by Capcom, featuring a White American protagonist and set in Africa. This article argues that approaching this as a Japanese game reveals aspects of a Japanese racial and colonial social imaginary that are missed if this context of production is ignored. In terms of race, the game presents hybrid racial subjectivities that can be related to Japanese perspectives of Blackness and Whiteness, where these terms a…
Science and the politics of openness: Here be monsters
examines the collaborations between scientists and the entertainment industry.He is currently writing the book Indecent Science, which will explore the historic interactions between science, religion and movie censorship.Adam Kokotovich is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Minnesota, studying invasive-species risk assessment and management.An interdisciplinary social scientist, he is interested in highlighting and opening to …
Special Issue: Games and Gaming in China
Genetic and Genomic Discourses at the Dawn of the 21st Century
The Bow-drill in North America
The History of the Maya
America: Mexico Before Cortez. J. E ric T hompson
The Bow-drill in North America
Food Taboos, Diet, and Hunting Strategy: The Adaptation to Animals in Amazon Cultural Ecology [and Comments and Reply]
The issue of food prohibitions on such Amazonian game animals as deer is examined from an ecological perspective, in contrast to previous symbolic or structuralist views on this subject. Examined in conjunction with settlement pattern, technology, animal behavior, and habitat productivity, which together determine the food-extraction potential of a population, the avoidance of certain inherently edible species by characterizing them as inebible i…
Unity and Diversity in American Political Culture: An Exploratory Study of the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity
Drawing on participant observation and quantitative analysis, this paper investigates the National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity, a series of local conversation projects organized by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1995 and 1996. After linking this program to debates about American political culture, the paper analyzes the observational and survey data in light of five hypotheses about the conversations. The convers…
People in Political Science
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Trusting and Joining? An Empirical Test of the Reciprocal Nature of Social Capital
Genetic governance: The risks, oversight and regulation of genetic databases in the UK
Increasing scientific and commercial interest is being paid to the creation of large population-based genetic databases to study the relationship between genes and disease. This paper will use ideas from the sociology of technology to look at the network of actors involved in the production, use and commercial exploitation of human genetic data, the social and ethical issues posed by genetic databases and the development of new governance arrange…
The Drugs Don't Work: Expectations and the Shaping of Pharmacogenetics
This article examines one particular set of technologies arising from developments in human genetics, those aimed at improving the targeting, design and use of conventional small molecule drugs-pharmacogenetics. Much of the debate about the applications and consequences of pharmacogenetics has been highly speculative, since little or no working technology is yet on the market. This article provides a novel analysis of the development of pharmacog…
Regulating the Commercial Development of Genetic Testing in the UK: Problems, Possibilities and Policy
Genetic testing promises to revolutionize health care. This article describes the development of genetic testing in the UK and the first attempts to commercially exploit this technology. It then examines the way in which testing has been governed by both the medical profession and the state, and analyses the main unresolved issues for public policy. We argue that the full range of social policy issues raised by genetic testing can only be underst…
Genetic and Genomic Discourses at the Dawn of the 21st Century
Community and Identity in Cyberspace: An Introduction to Key Themes and Issues
A Global Answer to Global Problems: The Case for a New Leaders' Forum
Can Science Alone Improve the Measurement and Communication of Race and Ethnicity in Genetic Research? Exploring the Strategies Proposed by Nature Genetics
The Promissory Pasts of Blood Stem Cells
The promise of pharmacogenetics: Assessing the prospects for disease and patient stratification
Biobanks, national identity and imagined communities: The case of UK biobank
The Politics of Personalised Medicine: Pharmacogenetics in the Clinic - Hedgecoe, A
Hedgecoe, A ( 2004 ) The Politics of Personalised Medicine: Pharmacogenetics in the Clinic . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , ISBN: 0521602653 £19.99 (pbk) ISBN: 0521841771 €45.00 (hbk) 208pp Pharmacogenetics (PGx) is the study of the genetic basis of drug response and the use of genetic testing to prescribe and develop drugs. It formed the centrepiece of the 2003 Genetics White Paper and has been hailed as a revolutionary medical technol…
Establishing Stage-Discharge Relationships in Multiple-Channelled, Ephemeral Rivers: A Case Study of the Diamantina River, Australia
The method for deriving a stage-discharge relationship has a significant impact on the shape of the river's rating curve. We compare rating curves for a single gauging station on a mutiple-channelled river in Australia compiled using three different methods - the Urban Runoff and Basin Systems (URBS) rainfall-runoff model, an empirically-based velocity-area method, and the predictive Hydrologic Engineering Centre-River Analysis System (HEC-RAS) c…
From Bedside to Bench? Communities of Promise, Translational Research and the Making of Blood Stem Cells
Contemporary science and technology policy is concerned with improving the diffusion of knowledge from basic science into the clinic. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the emerging field of Regenerative Medicine. In this paper we critically explore the changing relationships between the bench and the bedside through the development of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). In the history of HSCs over a 50-year period, the relationship between basi…
The Standardization of Race and Ethnicity in Biomedical Science Editorials and UK Biobanks
As the search for human genetic variation has become a priority for biomedical science, debates have resurfaced about the use of race and ethnicity as scientific classifications. In this paper we consider the relationship between race, ethnicity and genetics, using insights from science and technology studies (STS) about processes of classification and standardization. We examine how leading biomedical science journals attempted to standardize th…
The Mass Media as Sentinel: Why Bad News About Issues is Good News for Participation
This article argues that negative news coverage of politically relevant social issues stimulates political participation by shaping citizen awareness of collective problems and interest in politics. By drawing citizen attention to social problems that government may attend to, the press acts as a sentinel for the mass public, cuing them to periods when participation is more important. Drawing on an analysis of the 1974 National Election Study in …
Capitalizing hope: The Commercial Development of Umbilical Cord Blood Stem Cell Banking
The creation of commercial cord blood banks rests on the promise of stem cell based regenerative medicine and marks the capitalization of human tissues within a future-oriented "regime of hope". This paper will present data from a survey of the international cord blood banking industry and will explore: (a) the way firms seek to commercialize cord blood as a new set of commodities; (b) the expectations and moral economy that are being constructed…
A genetic future for coronary heart disease
This paper is concerned with changing conceptions of genetic disease. It is based on an analysis of biomedical literature and focuses on the treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD) in four published commentary papers. The aim of this analysis is to explore the ways in which CHD is constructed as genetic and the place of genetic discourses in the wider set of ideas that circulate about the disease. This analysis is then used to consider some of …
Some thoughts on the meaning of sport in war zones
This paper addresses the issue of the playing of sport in war zones. Why might it be that combatants and/or civilians have the urge to play sport (sometimes even against their enemies) in the most dreadful of circumstances? What purpose does this activity serve and what might its meaning be for the participants? The first part of the paper will introduce and discuss both historical and contemporary examples to show that the practice of playing sp…
Sociology (35 works) · Political science (25 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Law (16 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Politics (13 works) · Biomedical Ethics and Regulation (12 works) · Social science (11 works)