Biocapital
Subtitle: the constitution of postgenomic life
By: Kaushik Sunder Rajan.
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 343
Subjects: Biotechnology industries
Description: "Biocapital is a major theoretical contribution to science studies and political economy. Grounding his analysis in a multi-sited ethnography of genomic research and drug development marketplaces in the United States and India, Kaushik Sunder Rajan argues that contemporary biotechnologies such as genomics can only be understood in relation to the economic markets within which they emerge. Sunder Rajan conducted fieldwork in biotechnology labs and in small start-up companies in the United States (mostly in the San Francisco Bay area) and India (mainly in New Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bombay) over a five-year period spanning 1999 to 2004. He draws on his research with scientists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and policymakers to compare drug development in the two countries, examining the practices and goals of research, the financing mechanisms, the relevant government regulations, and the hype and marketing surrounding promising new technologies. In the process, he illuminates the global flow of ideas, information, capital, and people connected to biotech initiatives. Sunder Rajan's ethnography informs his theoretically sophisticated inquiry into how the contemporary world is shaped by the marriage of biotechnology and market forces, by what he calls technoscientific capitalism." -- Publisher's description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : capitalisms and biotechnologies; title: Circulations; title: Exchange and value : contradictions in market logic in American and Indian genome; title: Enterprises; title: Life and debt : global and local political ecologies of biocapital; title: Articulations; title: Vision and hype : the conjuration of promissory biocapitalist futures; title: Promise and fetish : genomic facts and personalized medicine, or life is a business; title: Plan; title: Salvation and nation : underlying belief structures of biocapital; title: Entrepreneurs and start-ups : the story of an e-learning company; title: Coda : surplus and symptom.