The social as trans-genic - On bio-power and its implications for the social

This article has a triple aim: (1) it explores how the stunning advance of modern bioscience is affecting the social world, and how once-set boundaries are now being quickly transgressed; (2) it is suggested that the theoretical divides between modernists and post-modernists can be fruitfully viewed, from a sociology of knowledge perspective, as traces of a much more profound and ongoing evolutionary discourse now also affecting the social and the human sciences; (3) concerns are expressed regarding the destabilization of both the natural and the social world alike as a consequence of bioscience: the long-term social effects of the emphasis on individual choice, as presently argued, will eventually erode the system of collective responsibility altogether.