Synopses & Reviews
Lively Capital is an urgent and important collection of essays addressing the reconfigured relations between the life sciences and the market. Exploring the ground where social and cultural anthropology intersect with science and technology studies, prominent scholars investigate the relationship of biotechnology to ethics, governance, and markets, as well as the new legal, social, cultural, and institutional mechanisms emerging to regulate biotechnology. The contributors examine genomics, pharmaceutical marketing, intellectual property, environmental science, clinical trials, patient advocacy, and other such matters as they are playing out in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Lively Capital is not only about the commercialization of the life sciences, but their institutional histories, epistemic formations, and systems of valuation. It is also about the lively affectsandmdash;the emotions and desiresandmdash;involved when technologies and research impinge on experiences of embodiment, kinship, identity, disability, citizenship, accumulation, and dispossession. At stake in the commodification of the life sciences are opportunities to intervene in and adjudicate matters of health, life, and death.
Contributors. Timothy Choy, Joseph Dumit, Michael M. J. Fischer, Kim Fortun, Mike Fortun, Donna Haraway, Sheila Jasanoff, Wen-Hua Kuo, Andrew Lakoff, Kristin Peterson, Chloe Silverman, Elta Smith, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Travis J. Tanner
Review
andquot;The air we breathe, the dogs with whom we cohabit, the children we breed, and the pharmaceuticals we regulate co-evolve simultaneously with the differential capitalization of life forms, life sciences, and life circumstances. Convincing us that 'lively capital' is, indeed, a living social form, these essays provide a stunningly provocative read!andquot;andmdash;Rayna Rapp, author of Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America
Review
andquot;Lively Capital is a terrific collection of essays, an important endeavor which will garner serious attention not only in anthropology and science and technology studies but across the human sciences. It will be as widely read as any anthology I can imagine, because of the sharpness of its essays and the diversity of its approaches to the challenges of rethinking the relations of life, capital, and value more generally.andquot;andmdash;Lawrence Cohen, author of No Aging in India: Alzheimer's, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things
Review
andldquo;In many ways, Lively Capital reflects both the challenges and the benefits of adopting an interdisciplinary approach to researching an issue. As a result, the book provides a thought-provoking read for those with an interest in the processes of commodification and in the politics of emerging bioeconomies.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Lively Capital is a challenging, fiercely analytical, and ambitious collection of thirteen essays, tied together by an excellent introduction and epilogue by the editor, Kaushik Sunder Rajan. . . . It is rare to find an edited volume that covers so many diverse and seemingly disparate topics and yet demonstrates such symmetry between its individual contributions.andrdquo;and#160;
Synopsis
Collection of essays that examine the legal, cultural, and institutional mechanisms that have emerged to regulate biotechnology on the global level, as well as the ethical questions that arise out of the regimes of capital that govern scientific research
Synopsis
This collection of anthropology of science essays explores the new forms of capital, markets, ethical, legal, and intellectual property concerns associated with new forms of research in the life sciences.
Synopsis
Biotechnology has changed the life sciences as more and more research is funded around commercial opportunities, rather than pure-science goals. This can be seen in health and pharmaceutical research, genomics, and the environment. This collection of anthropology of science essays explores the new forms of capital, markets, ethical, legal, and intellectual property concerns associated with these new forms of research. The collection features many of the scholars central to the Experimental Futures series project, including series editors Dumit and Fischer, guiding inspiration Donna Haraway, and recent Cultural Anthropology editors Kim and Mike Fortun.
About the Author
Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, also published by Duke University Press.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: The Capitalization of Life and the Liveliness of Capital / Kaushik Sunder Rajan 1
Part I. Encountering Value
1. Prescription Maximization and the Accumulation of Surplus Health in the Pharmaceutical Industry: The_BioMarx_Experiment / Joseph Dumit 45
2. Value-Added Dogs and Lively Capital / Donna J. Haraway 93
3. Air's Substantiations / Timothy Choy 121
Part II. Property and Dispossession
4. Taking Life: Private Rights in Public Nature / Sheila Jasanoff 155
5. Rice Genomes: Making Hybrid Properties / Elta Smith 184
6. Marx in New Zealand / Travis Tanner 211
7. AIDS Policies for Markets and Warriors: Dispossession, Capital, and Pharmaceuticals in Nigeria / Kristin Peterson 228
Part III. Global Knowledge Formations
8. Diagnostic Liquidity: Mental Illness and the Global Trade in DNA / Andrew Lakoff 251
9. Transforming States in the Era of Global Pharmaceuticals: Visioning Clinical Research in Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore / Wen-Hau Kuo 279
10. Biopolitics and the Informating of Environmentalism / Kim Fortun 306
Part IV. Promissory Experiments and Emergent Forms of Life
11. Genomics Scandals and Other Volatilities of Promising / Mike Fortun 329
12. Desperate and Rational: Of Love, Biomedicine, and Experimental Community / Chloe Silverman 354
13. Lively Biotech and Translational Research / Michael M. J. Fischer 385
Epilogue: Threads and Articulations / Kaushik Sunder Rajan 437
Bibliography 453
About the Contributors 491
Index 495