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.These binary models areno longer suited to describing the complex systems of generation,circulation, and acquisition of corporeal materials.Vital Politics and Bioeconomy 113A good insight into the relationship between bioscientific in-novations and transformations in capitalism is provided by theanthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan in Biocapital: The Constitu-tion of Postgenomic Life (2006).Beginning with the findings of sci-ence and technology studies that  science and  society are nottwo separate systems or spheres but rather mutually constitutiveones, Sunder Rajan investigates the coproduction of bioscientificknowledge and politico-economic regimes.His empirical thesis isthat the emergence of the biosciences marked a new form and anew phase of capitalism (ibid., 3). Biotechnology and a geneticunderstanding of illness are only comprehensible in the light of thecapitalist economy s global production and consumption networks.From a theoretical standpoint, Sunder Rajan links Foucault s con-cept of biopolitics to Marx s critique of political economy, situatingboth within his anthropological analysis (ibid., 3 15, 78 79).Theconstitution of biocapital can in turn be mapped through a dualperspective:[O]n the one hand, what forms of alienation, exploitation, and di-vestiture are necessary for a  culture of biotechnology innovationto take root? On the other hand, how are individual and collec-tive subjectivities and citizenships both shaped and conscripted bythese technologies that concern  life itself  ? (Ibid., 78)Sunder Rajan s book is based on a multiplicity of field studies,observations, and interviews with scientists, physicians, entrepre-neurs, and government representatives in the United States and In-dia.It combines detailed ethnographic research with comprehensivetheoretical reflection.Although the book s subject ma er is broad,the empirical focus of its analysis is centered on the development ofpharmaceuticals, especially the question of how genomic researchhas transformed their production.An important aspect of contempo-rary pharmaceutical research aims to create  personalized medicine,114 Vital Politics and Bioeconomythat is, medicine whose production is based on the genetic traits ofthe patient, sometimes known as pharmacogenomics.Sunder Rajan shows how the scientific production of knowledgecan no longer be separated from capitalist production of value.Tworisk discourses permeate each other in this area of pharmaceuticalresearch: the medical risk that current and future patients have offacing a major illness, and the financial risk of pharmaceutical com-panies whose great investment in research and development shouldultimately result in commodities.Sunder Rajan describes this branchof industry as a special form of capitalism a speculative capitalismthat is based less on the manufacture of concrete products than onhopes and expectations.It brings together into an  organic synthesisthe hope of patients that new medical treatments will be developedwith the zeal of risk capitalism for future profits.The  new face of capitalism (ibid., 3) has, in fact, a familiar face.As Sunder Rajan shows through the example of a research hospital inMumbai,  biocapitalism reproduces and renews traditional forms ofexploitation and inequality.At this hospital, a private company con-ducts pharmacogenomic studies for Western pharmaceutical compa-nies.Owing to the low cost of working in India and its genetic di-versity, it is an especially a ractive place for such research.The worktakes place in a part of Mumbai that is composed mostly of peoplewho are either poor or unemployed because of the decline of thetextile industry.Most of the research subjects have hardly any choicebut to participate,  of their own free will, for very li le remunera-tion in clinical studies and to offer their bodies as experimental fieldsfor biomedical study.Despite doing so, they are rarely able to takeadvantage of the new therapies that might result from such research.Sunder Rajan convincingly shows how global research and clinicalstudies rely on local conditions and how in  biocapitalism the im-provement or prolongation of one person s life is often linked to thedeterioration of the health and the systematic corporeal exploitationof someone else s (ibid., 93 97).Vital Politics and Bioeconomy 115The sociologist Melinda Cooper also studies the relationship be-tween capitalist restructuring and bioscientific innovation from aMarxist perspective [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]