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How Technologies Harm

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Technologies contribute to harms in a variety of ways, but can we ever say they are harmful in-and-of-themselves? This book offers a new way to understand how technologies, while not intrinsically ...
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  • 25 November 2025
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Technologies contribute to harms in a variety of ways, but can we ever say they are harmful in-and-of-themselves?

This book offers a new way to understand how technologies, while not intrinsically harmful, are laden with values and dispositions that can contribute to negative outcomes. Building on insights from postphenomenology, realist social theory and the philosophy of action, it provides a framework for examining technology-harm relations: relations with technology that are harmful by virtue of what they contribute to bringing about. It is for anyone seeking to design, regulate, research or simply use technology in a way that prioritizes well-being.

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Price: $119.95
Pages: 266
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Series: Studies in Social Harm
Publication Date: 25 November 2025
ISBN: 9781529247077
Format: Hardcover
BISACs: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Criminology, Crime and criminology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Technology Studies, Media studies: internet, digital media and society, Ethical issues: scientific, technological and medical developments
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'Compelling, thought-provoking and beautifully written, "How Technologies Harm" is a must-read for anyone who, across disciplines, has an interest in the technology-harm nexus.' Anita Lavorgna, University of Bologna
Mark A. Wood is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Deakin University.

Introduction

PART I: Understanding Harm

1. What Is Social Harm?

2. The Nature of Harm

PART II: Understanding Technology

3. Instruments, Extensions, Affordances

4. Technology as Practice and Actant

5. Postphenomenology and Technological Mediation

PART III: The Technology–Harm Relations Framework

6. An Overview of the Framework

7. Design Modes

8. Translation, Infusion, Zemiosis

9. Doing Harm with Things

10. Harms Beyond Use

11. Higher-order Harm Relations

Conclusion: Pulling at the Threads of Enmeshment