Biocapital : the constitution of post-genomic life

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 485-497).(cont.) In the process, this thesis intervenes in social theoretical debates not simply around the nature and production of knowledge and value, but also around the place of larger belief-systems - relating to religion, nation and ethics - in such productive enterprises. It simultaneously intervenes in conceptual debates within cultural anthropology regarding methodological questions that surround the undertaking of comparative ethnographic projects of powerful sites of knowledge production and value generation in a globalized world.This thesis is concerned with tracking and theorizing the co-production of an emergent technoscientific regime - that of biotechnology in the context of drug development - with an emergent political economic regime that sees the increased prevalence of such research in corporate locales, with corporate agendas and practices. Hence biocapital, which asks questions of the implications for life sciences when performed in corporations, and for capitalism, when biotechnology becomes a key source of market value. The methodology followed in this dissertation is multi-sited ethnography. I study a range of actors - including academic and industrial scientists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and policy makers - in two distinct national environments, the United States and India, as they shape and come to terms with these emergent technologies and emergent political economies. I attempt, through such a study, to theorize biocapital, drawing primarily upon Marxian and Foucauldian understandings of life, labor and value, and upon literature in Science and Technology Studies, that has constantly drawn attention to the constructed, contingent and politically consequent nature of technoscientific activity.by Kaushik Sunder Rajan.Ph.D

Corporate Accountability in Transitional Justice: Reflections on an Ongoing Social Lab (Roundtable)

This roundtable describes and reflects upon the Corporate Liability and Sustainable Peace (CLASP) Lab, a “social lab” convened to advance corporate accountability in post-conflict and transitional justice settings around the world. Launched in February 2021, the CLASP Lab is a virtual forum in three languages, bringing together more than 40 lawyers and community activists from 25 countries in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East to share experiences and devise strategies for holding corporations accountable for human rights violations, as part of processes of transitional justice

Life, time, and the organism:Temporal registers in the construction of life forms

In this paper, we articulate how time and temporalities are involved in the making of living things. For these purposes, we draw on an instructive episode concerning Norfolk Horn sheep. We attend to historical debates over the nature of the breed, whether it is extinct or not, and whether presently living exemplars are faithful copies of those that came before. We argue that there are features to these debates that are important to understanding contemporary configurations of life, time and the organism, especially as these are articulated within the field of synthetic biology. In particular, we highlight how organisms are configured within different material and semiotic assemblages that are always structured temporally. While we identify three distinct structures, namely the historical, phyletic and molecular registers, we do not regard the list as exhaustive. We also highlight how these structures are related to the care and value invested in the organisms at issue. Finally, because we are interested ultimately in ways of producing time, our subject matter requires us to think about historiographical practice reflexively. This draws us into dialogue with other scholars interested in time, not just historians, but also philosophers and sociologists, and into conversations with them about time as always multiple and never an inert background

Introduction: Biomedical Trans-Actions, Postgenomics and Knowledge/Value

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleThis paper examines the notion of “translational research”, which has become a dominant form of the institutionalization and practice of contemporary biomedicine, as an entry point into theorizing questions of knowledge, value and their articulations. We are interested in locating translational research in a conjuncture that is marked, on the one hand, by a “post-genomic” moment in the life sciences, and on the other hand, by the capitalization and globalization of biomedicine. We undertake this through reference to the historical trajectory of these movements. In the process, we argue for a consideration of knowledge in terms of its mobility, rather than simply in terms of its ability to produce “truth”. These concerns with mobility, we suggest, articulate knowledge to and through value, whose own meanings and stakes come to matter in the process. We conclude that translational research in itself is just a signifier of a contemporary biomedicine that operates “in the trans”, under the sign and context of various movements across domains that see the production, articulation and problematization of knowledge and value. This argument serves as an introduction and framing for the three essays in this Dossier

Making Valuable Health: Pharmaceuticals, Global Capital and Alternative Political Economies.

International audienc

New Pathways in Transitional Justice

Transitional justice mechanisms are increasingly considered in the context of long-term historical injustices, including in relation to racial injustice in the U.S. This roundtable explores past experiences along with new approaches and the current challenges in the pursuit of accountability and coming to terms with systemic human rights violations