the contributions gathered in this volume represent part of a growing movement that seeks to intervene in the dominant ways that bioethics is understood and practised. the need for new and critical approaches to bioethics does not merely reflect recent theoretical scholarship, but is at the heart of unprecedented advances in biotechnology, coupled with current trends in healthcare management and delivery. this is all the more pressing as bioethics itself has been institutionalized as an integral part of mainstream medical management and administration. Written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, these contributions variously suggest that traditional modes of bioethics are proving incommensurable with burgeoning biotechnologies, medical management systems, and the emergent conceptions of the “self” that have arisen in their midst.