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AbstractDirect‐to‐consumer genetic tests (DTCGT) provide individualized risk profiles for common diseases through social web techniques. Academic debates have predominantly denounced them as a potentially harmful commercialization of genetics and focused on how laypeople might (mis)understand and (mis)use this information. DTCGT has also stimulated a heterogeneous set of methods and theoretical perspectives in the social sciences, which have drawn on but also complicated a purely medical understanding.DTCGT is unanimously deemed disruptive, albeit for a variety of reasons. The different underlying notions of disruptiveness correspond to an implicit sociology of information resonating with a main sociological framework, namely, rational actor theory, governmentality studies, and ecological approaches to digital practices and infrastructures. Accordingly, three corpora are identified. The first conceives of disruption in terms of medical impact on prospective patients. The second proposes a biopolitical interpretation by framing DTCGT as vectors of new governmentality based on making individuals responsible for disease prediction and prevention. The third scrutinizes users' engagements with data and infrastructures at the intersection of informatics and genomics and locates DTCGT within the broader process of blossoming health digitalization. Accordingly, the disruptive issues at stake mainly concern political and economic aspects related to data sharing and crowdsourcing.

International audience ; Non-rare thrombophilia (NRT) are hereditary predispositions to thromboembolism, the most severe side effect of combined hormonal contraception. In the mid-1990s, the identification of NRT stirred up a controversy over the possibility of investigating these genetic variants in women wishing to use contraception. Through a review of literature, this article reconstructs the debate over whether and how this genetic test should be prescribed as a way to reconfigure the risk visibility on pharmacological contraception. The main arguments identified concern the epidemiological, social, economic and clinical aspects of the test. In a context where the overall thrombotic risk for hormonal contraception is largely invisible, the genetic tests turn to embody the thrombotic risk itself. Those who opt for selective screening argue that a better estimation of risk implies a test prescription embed in a global medical assessment of women's individual risk. To advocates of universal or 'extended' screening, the tests are valuable tools to inform women on the thrombotic risk and, as such, appraised as a moral/legal obligation, whatever their predictive power. Risk visibility thus appears as an insightful concept to analyse a complex setting associating clinical, political, social and cultural considerations that touches upon medical power, women's responsibility and drug safety.

International audience ; Non-rare thrombophilia (NRT) are hereditary predispositions to thromboembolism, the most severe side effect of combined hormonal contraception. In the mid-1990s, the identification of NRT stirred up a controversy over the possibility of investigating these genetic variants in women wishing to use contraception. Through a review of literature, this article reconstructs the debate over whether and how this genetic test should be prescribed as a way to reconfigure the risk visibility on pharmacological contraception. The main arguments identified concern the epidemiological, social, economic and clinical aspects of the test. In a context where the overall thrombotic risk for hormonal contraception is largely invisible, the genetic tests turn to embody the thrombotic risk itself. Those who opt for selective screening argue that a better estimation of risk implies a test prescription embed in a global medical assessment of women's individual risk. To advocates of universal or 'extended' screening, the tests are valuable tools to inform women on the thrombotic risk and, as such, appraised as a moral/legal obligation, whatever their predictive power. Risk visibility thus appears as an insightful concept to analyse a complex setting associating clinical, political, social and cultural considerations that touches upon medical power, women's responsibility and drug safety.

Non-rare thrombophilia (NRT) are hereditary predispositions to thromboembolism, the most severe side effect of combined hormonal contraception. In the mid-1990s, the identification of NRT stirred up a controversy over the possibility of investigating these genetic variants in women wishing to use contraception. Through a review of literature, this article reconstructs the debate over whether and how this genetic test should be prescribed as a way to reconfigure the risk visibility on pharmacological contraception. The main arguments identified concern the epidemiological, social, economic and clinical aspects of the test. In a context where the overall thrombotic risk for hormonal contraception is largely invisible, the genetic tests turn to embody the thrombotic risk itself. Those who opt for selective screening argue that a better estimation of risk implies a test prescription embed in a global medical assessment of women's individual risk. To advocates of universal or 'extended' screening, the tests are valuable tools to inform women on the thrombotic risk and, as such, appraised as a moral/legal obligation, whatever their predictive power. Risk visibility thus appears as an insightful concept to analyse a complex setting associating clinical, political, social and cultural considerations that touches upon medical power, women's responsibility and drug safety ; Peer reviewed

International audience ; Non-rare thrombophilia (NRT) are hereditary predispositions to thromboembolism, the most severe side effect of combined hormonal contraception. In the mid-1990s, the identification of NRT stirred up a controversy over the possibility of investigating these genetic variants in women wishing to use contraception. Through a review of literature, this article reconstructs the debate over whether and how this genetic test should be prescribed as a way to reconfigure the risk visibility on pharmacological contraception. The main arguments identified concern the epidemiological, social, economic and clinical aspects of the test. In a context where the overall thrombotic risk for hormonal contraception is largely invisible, the genetic tests turn to embody the thrombotic risk itself. Those who opt for selective screening argue that a better estimation of risk implies a test prescription embed in a global medical assessment of women's individual risk. To advocates of universal or 'extended' screening, the tests are valuable tools to inform women on the thrombotic risk and, as such, appraised as a moral/legal obligation, whatever their predictive power. Risk visibility thus appears as an insightful concept to analyse a complex setting associating clinical, political, social and cultural considerations that touches upon medical power, women's responsibility and drug safety.

One point of consensus in the otherwise very controversial discussion about the benefits and dangers of DTC genetics in the health domain is the lack of substantial clinical utility. At the same time, both the empirical and conceptual literature indicate that health-related DTC tests can have value and utility outside of the clinic. We argue that a broader and multi-faceted conceptualization of utility and value would enrich the ethical and social discussion of DTC testing in several ways: First, looking at ways in which DTC testing can have personal and social value for users – in the form of entertainment, learning, or a way to relate to others – can help to explain why people still take DTC tests, and will, further down the line, foster a more nuanced understanding of secondary and tertiary uses of DTC test results (which could very well unearth new ethical and regulatory challenges). Second, considering the economic value and broader utility of DTC testing foregrounds wider social and political aspects than have been dominant in the ethical and regulatory debates surrounding DTC genetics so far. These wider political aspects include the profound power asymmetries that characterize the collection and use of personal genetic data

One point of consensus in the otherwise very controversial discussion about the benefits and dangers of DTC genetics in the health domain is the lack of substantial clinical utility. At the same time, both the empirical and conceptual literature indicate that health-related DTC tests can have value and utility outside of the clinic. We argue that a broader and multi-faceted conceptualization of utility and value would enrich the ethical and social discussion of DTC testing in several ways: First, looking at ways in which DTC testing can have personal and social value for users – in the form of entertainment, learning, or a way to relate to others – can help to explain why people still take DTC tests, and will, further down the line, foster a more nuanced understanding of secondary and tertiary uses of DTC test results (which could very well unearth new ethical and regulatory challenges). Second, considering the economic value and broader utility of DTC testing foregrounds wider social and political aspects than have been dominant in the ethical and regulatory debates surrounding DTC genetics so far. These wider political aspects include the profound power asymmetries that characterize the collection and use of personal genetic data in many contexts.

Contemporary work increasingly presents itself as an immeasurable endeavour. The social and subjective spaces in which it is practiced are no longer easily circumscribed, and the conceptual categories that traditionally described its relationship with value now appear practically unusable. In particular, workers in the 'creative industries' are paradigmatic subjects of the 'work fragmentation' process of the post-Fordist era. Cutting across divisions between life and work, employment and unemployment, the performing arts are in many ways a laboratory of job flexibility, where innovative contractual arrangements and professional trajectories have been developed.
In this article, we have mapped the multiple forms that work has taken in the last two decades in Italy. The empirical data is derived from a combined method that utilizes both quantitative surveys and in-depth interviews with artists, technicians and organizers working in the fields of theatre, music, dance and video making. A central feature of the new regulative conditions, and therefore the experiences of these professionals, is the new relationship with time and, more specifically, the 'loss of measurability' of hired labour. The aim is to provide a multilayered analysis of the interactions between the socio-economic conditions, career pathways and cultural aspects, i.e. the expectations, reputation, self-perception and social recognition of these jobs. Accordingly, these work patterns are studied as self-employment strategies based on the diversification of activities and expertise, and at the same time, attempts to devise new spatial and temporal configurations of labour, epitomized by the hybrid condition of the 'salaried employer'.
In these cases, precariousness emerges as a generative terrain of ambivalent subjectivities. On the one hand, the workforce is spontaneously mobilized and autonomously organized by the realization of desires, expression and self-fulfilment, beyond mere economic rewards. On the other, the labour itself becomes increasingly intertwined with ones life, as well as becoming immeasurable. Time loses its function as a unit of measure for compensation (i.e. as in work for a flat rate). This situation frequently leads to the spread of labour into other spheres of life and the risk of self-exploitation. To conclude, the new experiences of union organization and social movements, manifesting in the occupations of theatres, are examined as spaces where differing, and even opposing, solidarity and 'class composition' practices within the new creative labour(s) are experimented.