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Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life Review"Biocapital" by Kaushik Sunder Rajan is an impressive book that offers a sophisticated analysis of the biotech industry. Written as an MIT graduate student well-grounded in Marxian economics and Foucauldian social theories, Mr. Rajan's ethnographic study compares and contrasts biotech companies in the U.S. and India to illuminate how industrial practices are shaped by a myriad of economic and cultural forces. Among the many insights produced in this fascinating study, the author convincingly demonstrates how the so-called 'life sciences' are representative of a new phase of capitalism that is characterized by the temporality of our postmodern time.Mr. Rajan discusses how biotech is changing relationships and practices between public and private entities. He explains that high tech capitalism is dependent upon information in order to innovate and produce; traditionally, this service was fulfilled by publicly-funded research institutions. But the speed at which the biotech industry competes has blurred these boundaries; the race to map and "own" the human genome that pitted the National Institute of Health against Celera Genomics is a case in point. The author explores struggles over privacy and ownership rights, finding that governments are responding to these pressures by behaving more like corporations. For example, the U.S. has seen an explosion in partnerships between universities and private corporations while the Indian state has sought to retain genetic property rights for its public hospitals. In this sense, Mr. Rajan's narrative positions the biotech industry squarely in the vanguard of contemporary global economic and institutional change.
Mr. Rajan's extensive comparative analysis reveals how such dynamics play out in markedly different ways in local contexts. In the U.S., the author describes how messianic corporate leaders hype their miracle drugs as salvationary promise; venture capital sometimes finances ritualistic displays of excess that intends to inscribe corporate brands on the minds of investors and employees. The author explains that a reverence for free market capitalism and the fetish of personalized medicine compels investors to risk massive amounts of money on little more than the promise of scientific discovery. However, the process of calling the future into the present creates a tension between the promise and the reality, a problem that is addressed by corporate public relations departments -- including marketing campaigns that are aimed at introducing remedies for consumer patients-in-waiting at progressively earlier stages of intervention.
In India, Mr. Rajan traces technocapitalism to the postcolonial drive to invest in science as a path to empowering the independent state. Consequently, he finds that Indian entrepreneurship is much more conservative than in the U.S. In fact, many Indian companies tend to engage in production or research work on a contractual basis for western businesses. The author discusses how the ideal of the American free market is often balanced against socialist values that stress the sharing of scientific discovery to the benefit of the community, suggesting how struggles over the future of the Indian economy might be waged.
Interestingly, Mr. Rajan chose GeneEd as the major case study for the book in part because it highlights the experiences of Indian entrepreneurs working and living in the U.S. The fascinating narrative reveals how the hegemonic power of capitalism instills social meaning among workers who dedicate themselves to fulfilling the firm's mission. Yet the author finds age-old themes at play, such as the alienation of labor that resulted from the company's pursuit of a growth strategy that commodified some skill sets while valuing others. Despite the fact that GeneEd plays a peripheral industry role, the structural and cultural logics of biotech become visible to us thanks to Mr. Rajan's brilliantly perceptive and expert commentary. We learn how GeneEd might have evolved but was moved in a particular direction owing to a mix of external market forces and the specific decisions of its capable leadership team.
I highly recommend this book to demanding readers interested in an interdisciplinary perspective on technoscientific capitalism and its connection to our past, the present, and our many possible futures.Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life Overview
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