Nick Lee

University of Warwick, Institute of Education, Director of Research

University of Warwick, Warwick Centre for Integrative Synthetic Biology, ELSA Director

Followers

111

Following

Co-author

Public Views

Nick works with partners across the social, medical and life sciences on topics including antibiotic resistance, bacterial life and handscapes, synthetic biology, climate change and innovation using a perspective based on ‘emergent biosocial phenomena’.

• ‘emergent’ because each is the ongoing product of massively multiple interactions between material, social and signifying forces

• ‘biosocial’ because many of the events that characterize these areas involve the refiguring of relations between forces that are conventionally categorized as biological and social

He has three related interests in childhood and youth.

1. Young people and the public understanding of medical, life and climate sciences
2. The young as the focus of and as consumers of interventions and informed by developments in the life sciences
3. Young people as active contributors to reframing debates about biotechnology and sustainability.

less

InterestsView All (8)

Uploads

Papers by Nick Lee

Studying Anthropocene Childhoods: Which Materialism?

Kinder, Kindheiten und Kindheitsforschung, 2020

Mot en omogen sociologi

Themed section: Actor-network theory and managerialism - Preface

Organization

Liberation from/Liberation within: Examining One Laptop per Child with Amartya Sen and Bruno Latour

Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, 2012

... Kullman, Kevin and Lee, Nick, 1968-(2012) Liberation from / Liberation within : examining &am... more

Becoming mass: glamour, authority and human presence

The Sociological Review, 2001

As social participants, we often feel an intense need to supplement our visible, physical mass wi... more As social participants, we often feel an intense need to supplement our visible, physical mass with some other invisible presence, be it our'character',■ personality'or'spirit'.'Being persons' requires more of us than being human bodies in animation. In the normal run of ...

Researching Children's Diets in England: Critical Methods in a Consumer Society

Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2009

How can critical psychological researchers and practitioners respond to current concern about chi... more How can critical psychological researchers and practitioners respond to current concern about children's diets? This paper argues for a methodological strategy of multiplicity that decentres prevalent concerns with carer-consumers' subjectivity. First, it discusses the notion of alienation and charts the establishment of consumer choice as a regulatory principle in England. It then explores ambiguities of choice and alienation in the life of the consumer. The different narratives of change that are embodied in a British TV programme and an ongoing debate over nutritional labelling are then explored as illustrations of how reliance on subjectivity as a focus of change processes is likely to intensify ambiguity and raise consumers' status anxiety. The paper then examines Cultural and Historical Activity Theory as a potential source of alternatives and argues instead for greater sensitivity to conflicts and coalitions within the multiplicities of “engagements” that form consumer's “perspectives.”

Organization Unbound: Actor-Network Theory, Research Strategy and Institutional Flexibility

Organization, 1999

We develop two related Actor-Network Theory (ANT) arguments for organizational analysis. The firs... more We develop two related Actor-Network Theory (ANT) arguments for organizational analysis. The first concerns research strategy and draws upon Latour's (1999) notion of definitional `sliding' to describe how ANT overcomes its analytical limitations by removing conditions that exclude the `other'. Through this discussion, we argue that, research-wise, ANT appears to be ontologically relativist, in permitting the world to be organized differentially, yet empirically realist in providing `theory-laden' descriptions of organization. Our second argument concerns institutional boundedness and flexibility, and suggests that ANT's ontological slipperiness may actually be of value for studies of organizational form. We outline how, under ANT, the analytical focus shifts from structural prescription to processual deconstruction, the associated political dimension concerning where and for whom boundaries are produced/consumed. Overall, we argue for organizational field resear...

Introducing Narrative Psychology: Self, Trauma and the Construction of Meaning

Journal of Health Psychology, 2001

Download

Huston, A. C. (ed): Children in poverty: Child development and public policy. Cambridge University Press, 1991. Pp. x + 331. £30/$44.50 Hardback. ISBN 0–521–39162–8

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 1992

Kurtines, W. M., Azmitia, M. and Gewirtz, J. L. (Eds): The role of values in psychology and human development. Wiley-Interscience, 1992. Pp xii + 292. £32.50 Hardback. ISBN 0–471–53945–7

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 1993

Child protection investigations: Discourse analysis and the management of incommensurability

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 1994

This paper asks whether discourse analytic approaches in social psychology have yet produced meth... more

The Consumption of Mass

Contemporary Sociology, 2003

Part I -- Imagining Mass. Chapter 1 -- Individuality and Susceptibility: The Consumption of Agenc... more Part I -- Imagining Mass. Chapter 1 -- Individuality and Susceptibility: The Consumption of Agency in Social Structures, Barry Barnes, University of Exeter. Chapter 2 -- Pass the Salt: Materiality and the Production of Mass for Consumption, Dan Rose, University of Pennsylvania. Chapter 3 -- Consuming Mass: Mutability and Consumption, Robert Cooper, Keele University. Part II -- Community and Mass. Chapter 4 -- The Consumption of Masses: Calculating Community for Maximum Impact and Instant Obsolescence, Zygmunt Bauman, Leeds University (Emeritus). Chapter 5 -- Ordering Otherness: The Consumption and Disposal of Others, Christina Palli Monguilod, Aotonoma University. Chapter 6 -- The Waiting of Mass: Individuality and the Process of Double Forgetting, Rolland Munro, Keele University. Part III -- Writing and Mass. Chapter 7 -- All Consuming Passions: The Refiguiring of Subjectivity in later Twentieth Century Discourses of Consumption, Joanna Latimer, Keele University. Chapter 8 -- The Mystery of the Assumption: Womena s Writing and Endless Consumption, Heather Hopfl, Bolton . Chapter 9 -- The Consumption of Mass: Interpreting Luck and the Mass Average, Jane Parish, Keel University. Part IV -- Performing Mass. Chapter 10 -- The Consumption of Vagrancy, Thomas Bay and Per Backius, University of Stockholm. Chapter 11 -- The Consumption of Bass: Technoa s Funky Alien and the Contusion of Mass, Rob Beeston, Keele University. Chapter 12 -- Border Blues: Maastricht and Dada Disorder, Robert Grafton Small, Keel University

Childhood 2025 and Beyond

Beyond Current Horizons, 2008

Section 1: Timing, childhood and technology: a survey of forces In this section I will describe c... more

Childhood and Human Value: Development, Separation and Separability

Open University Press McGraw-Hill Education McGraw-Hill House Shoppenhangers Road Maidenhead Berk... more

The Challenge of Childhood

Childhood, 1999

Three case studies of the position of children within adult institutions are reported. Each study... more Three case studies of the position of children within adult institutions are reported. Each study examines the difficulties that surround children speaking for themselves. The studies focus on three different scales of analysis, moving from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to a regional crisis in child protection in the UK, to the constraints and opportunities for children as witnesses in UK courtrooms. At each scale of analysis it is argued that rather than making clear and univocal assumptions about children's capacities, adult institutions display an inability to decide on what status they should accord to children's utterances. As bearers of `childhood', children cut an ambiguous figure within adult institutions. An explanation of this ambiguity is offered in terms of adult institution's characteristic means of procuring their own legitimacy. Childhood's ambiguity, which is at once a product of, and a hindrance to, institutional legitimacy is typ...

Cultures of Listening: Psychology, Resonance, Justice

Review of General Psychology, May 13, 2022

Listening, as a general psychological capacity, is a key aspect of perception, communication and ... more Listening, as a general psychological capacity, is a key aspect of perception, communication and experience. However, listening researchers frequently characterize it as a neglected, misunderstood and ill-defined phenomenon. This is a significant problem because questions of listening pervade social inequalities and injustices, as this paper demonstrates in the context of UK child protection practices. Exploring concepts of listening within and beyond psychology, the paper illustrates how a lack of overall theorization can contribute to inequality and injustice within applied listening practices. To address this, the paper theorizes listening in the spirit of Whiteheadian process ontology, drawing on the work of Nancy and Bonnet. Based on this, it develops the concept of 'Cultures of Listening' (CoL), which provides a tool for the critical analysis of troubled listening practices, indicating how they can be challenged and transformed. Within CoL, listening is not a mere aspect of auditory perception or communication, but each instant of listening is considered as shaped by and expressing political, social and experiential circumstances, that is, cultures. The paper demonstrates the theoretical, critical and applied value of CoL by offering a detailed analysis of the role of listening within troubled UK child protection practices.

Download

Tweak: Biosocial Imaginations and Educational Futures

The Politics of Education and Technology, 2013

Imaginative and practical links have long been drawn between children’s life processes and projec... more Imaginative and practical links have long been drawn between children’s life processes and projected futures (Rose, 1989; Turmel, 2008). Many educational enterprises have attempted to take hold of the complexity of human maturation so as to bend it to chosen purposes, such as the promotion of literacy or increasing independence in learning. Thus, education can be seen as a set of practical “biosocial” activities (Lee & Motzkau, 2012) aimed at forging functional connections between life processes and socially preferred abilities and qualities. These activities have a defensible tendency to anticipate futures and to prefigure, and so limit and enable, children’s future behaviors, capabilities, and values. Such activities have both been guided by and have given rise to metaphors and narrative structures that try to frame and make sense of the complexity of the human condition. Consider the power of a phrase like “as the twig is bent, so the tree shall grow” in figuring children’s mental, physical, and moral development as targets of intervention, or the imagined adult careers that, as part of some children’s projected autobiographies, can motivate committed study. In the terms of this chapter, such metaphorical and narrative frames comprise “biosocial imaginations” (Lee & Motzkau, 2012). The key question addressed, therefore, is the increasing use of biotechnologies to achieve these preferred biosocial outcomes.

The Global Garden project: Imagining plant science

PLANTS, PEOPLE, PLANET, 2020

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which... more

Download

Childhood Futures: Better Childhoods?

Global Studies of Childhood, 2012

Parents and communities often want their children’s lives to be ‘better’ than their own. States o... more Parents and communities often want their children’s lives to be ‘better’ than their own. States often want future adults to be ‘better’ than the present crop. Historically, all manner of social, medical and political interventions have found inspiration and legitimation in the call for ‘better childhoods’. Emotional, practical and financial investment in children by parents, by communities and by states is a widespread feature of those contemporary societies that identify childhood with such a hope. Ways to make ‘better childhoods’ would seem, at first glance, to be obvious. The list of children’s unmet needs for food, medicine and education is long. But the delivery of these goods has always been dependent on a complex of political, ideological and economic considerations. For some commentators, even the condition of wealth is capable of rendering childhood ‘toxic’ through media exposure and diet (Palmer, 2007). Further, global futures do not look bright at the time of writing, with rising concern over security of energy and food supplies, climate change, demographic change, and intraand international armed conflict. It is sometimes difficult to imagine ‘better childhoods’ emerging from today’s conjunctions. The idea is further troubled by ongoing conflicts between universal children’s rights and local cultural expectations. What is ‘better’ for some children from some points of view is not ‘better’ for others. At the same time as basic needs and future existence are being brought into doubt in some countries, digital, biotechnical and genetic tools are being mobilised in other areas to offer radical new approaches to bettering childhood (Lee, forthcoming). This special issue explores the aspirations and anxieties about the future that are mobilised in discussions of what constitutes a better life for children in highly diverse circumstances, and examines how these aspirations are translated into lived experiences for and by young people. It is particularly concerned with the diversity of future visions and material resources that are available to make better childhoods around the world, and the implications of such diversity for social justice. But first, we need to make a few points about some of our keywords.

Otherness and the Actor NetworkThe Undiscovered Continent

American Behavioral Scientist

ABSTRACT

Nick Lee

Uploads

Papers by Nick Lee

Log In