Description
Book SynopsisAn argument that contemporary biotechnologies such as genomics can only be understood in relation to the economic markets within which they emerge
Trade Review“
Biocapital is an ambitious book; its conceptual scope has the potential to remake conversation in the human sciences. There is really nothing like the argument and synthesis Kaushik Sunder Rajan provides, which is surprising given how important his topic is.”—Lawrence Cohen, author of
No Aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family, and Other Modern Things“
Biocapital is excellent. It offers new insight into both late capitalism and the life sciences and also provides material and arguments for rethinking foundational concepts such as ‘valuation’ and ‘exchange.’”—Kim Fortun, author of
Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders“Reading Kaushik Sunder Rajan’s
Biocapital fills me with the same intellectual and personal excitement I felt reading Marx’s
Capital and Foucault’s
History of Sexuality for the first time.
Biocapital gives a passionate, thoroughly argued road map to dense and consequential worlds that I already inhabit, but have not known how to describe with the vividness and acumen required. Sunder Rajan integrates and explores in depth what many others only promise; i.e., the coproductions of meanings, values, and bodies in emerging regimes of biocapital. In the course of shaping ethnographic and theoretical inquiry into what he calls ‘lively capital,’ Sunder Rajan gives his readers lively value in every sense.”—Donna Haraway, author of
Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse™“
Biocapital has more than enough interesting verifiable claims to make it essential reading for anyone studying biotechnology and other contemporary hype-driven fields like nanotechnology and alternative energy.” -- Joseph November * ISIS *
“
Biocapital presents an intriguing analysis of the bioscience industry, especially the capitalist imperatives behind technological developments. . . . Thus for the bioethics audience it presents an engaging study of the biosciences both in relation to the presentation and valuation of ethics and the interdependence of science and markets.” -- Kean Birch * American Journal of Bioethics *
“
Biocapital is a deft, complex, and carefully argued work.” -- Cori Hayden * American Anthropologist *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Capitalisms and Biotechnologies 1
Part I. Circulations
1. Exchange and Value: Contradictions in Market Logic in American and Indian Genome Enterprises 39
2. Life and Debt: Global and Local Political Ecologies of Biocapital 77
Part II. Articulations
3. Vision and Hype: The Conjuration of Promissory Biocapitalist Futures 107
4. Promise and Fetish: Genomic Facts and Personalized Medicine, or Life Is a Business Plan 138
5. Salvation and Nation: Underlying Belief Structures of Biocapital 182
6. Entrepeneurs and Start-Ups: The Story of an E-learning Company 234
Coda: Surplus and Symptom 277
Notes 289
References 315
Index 327
