Biotech Cultures: Global and Asian Assemblages on Science &

Technology

Coordinator: Denisa Kera, Assistant Professor, Communications & New Media

Project Description and Scope

While the social study of biotech is the subject of extensive and well-funded research in Europe and North America, it has received little funding or support in Asia, apart from studies related to medical ethics. This situation is increasingly hard to sustain, however, as biotechnology becomes a part of the everyday life, governance, economic development, and the cultural imagination of Asian societies from India through Southeast Asia, to Japan and China. While increasing numbers of European and North American scholars make Asian biotechnology their field sites, their efforts are necessarily sporadic, and often country-specific. They lack an Asian collaborator, and Asia lacks a centre which will attract and coordinate cutting-edge research in this field. Biotechnology, biosciences, and biomedicine play an important role in how Singapore and Southeast Asia envision their future and very little if anything is written on the topic. The aim of this reading group is to survey and assess the present discussions surrounding biotechnologies and understand the implications of this development. In the reading group we will compare the social, cultural, and historical perspective of biotechnologies and try to apply it to the Asian context. Given Singapore’s increasingly close identification with this realm of knowledge creation, capital accumulation, clinical and laboratory practice, visual imaging, and storytelling – particularly embodied in the creation of Biopolis – it seems important, and timely, to begin generating insightful scholarship about biotechnology in this portion of the world. The reading group will support the ongoing informal activities across faculties and the long term goal to make Singapore the center for the study of biotechnology in Asia, a project which closely complements (and in some sense completes) the Biopolis initiative.

A discussion on “Asian STS” (whether it exists, is possible, is a worthwhile framework, etc.) has actually begun among our colleagues in East Asia, and especially in the pages of the start-up journal East Asian Science, Technology, and Society (EASTS). In January of 2009, Singapore hosted an EASTS-sponsored workshop on “Emergent Science & Technology Studies in Southeast Asia”, the first of its kind for this region. The reading group will extend the conversation and allow us to invite a guest speaker. Our inquiries will be organized such that it will be sufficiently diverse to draw a broad picture of Asian biotechnology in both micro- and macrocosm, and across a range of knowledge realms. On the other hand, the texts and areas for discussion have been carefully chosen to allow enough that we can engage in a fruitful conversation, addressing research across disciplines but addressing similar objects and problems.

Initial Reading List

  • Bedau, Mark A. Parke, Emily C. (eds) The Ethics of Protocells: Moral and Social Implications of Creating Life in the Laboratory. The MIT Press, 2009.
  • Esposito, Roberto, Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2008.
  • Fischer, Michael M. J. Anthropological Futures. Duke University Press. July, 2009.
  • Fukuyama, Francis. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Picador, 2003.
  • Gottweiss & Petersen (eds), Biobanks: Governance in Comparative Perspective. Routledge, 2008.
  • Habermas, Jürgen. The Future of Human Nature. Polity, 2003.
  • Jasanoff, Sheila. Designs on Nature: Science And Democracy In Europe And The United States. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni Press, 2005.
  • Keating, Peter and Alberto Cambrosio. Biomedical Platforms: Realigning The Normal and the Pathological in Late-Twentieth-Century Medicine. The MIT Press, 2006.
  • Kac, Eduardo (ed). Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond. MIT Press, 2006.
  • Landecker, Hannah. Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. Harvard University Press: 2007.
  • Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Harvard University Press, 1988.
  • Latour, Bruno. The Pasteurization of France. Harvard University Press, 1988.
  • Ong, Aihwa.and Nancy N. Chen (eds) Asian Biotechnology: Population, Security, & Nation. Duke University Press, 2009.
  • Ong, Aihwa and Stephen Collier (eds) Global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. Wiley-Blackwell, 2005.
  • Rasmussen et al. Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter‎. The MIT Press 2008.
  • Sleeboom-Faulkner (ed), Human Genetic Biobanks in Asia: Politics of Trust and Scientific Advancement‎. Routledge, 2008.
  • Sunder Rajan, K., Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. DukeUniversity Press: 2006.
  • Thacker, Eugene. The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture(Leonardo Books). The MIT Press, 2006.
  • Wheale, Peter. Animal Genetic Engineering: Of Pigs, Oncomice, and Men. Boulder, Colo.: Pluto Press, 1995.

Meeting Schedule and Events

I.
Reading group meetings will be held a minimum of 4 times per semester (3 weeks apart)
(8 meetings from August to April)
Venue: FASS Research Clusters Meeting Room. Level 6 AS7

II.
Invited Speaker

Donna J. Haraway a professor and chair of the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States, considered one of the most famous philosopher of techno-science. Her books cover variety of issues related to biotechnology and STS that will frame our discussions: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991), Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience (1997, Ludwig Fleck Prize), and When Species Meet (2008).

List of Participants

  • Dr. Denisa Kera, Communications and New Media, FASS
  • Dr. Catelijne Coopmans, Sociology, FASS
  • A/P Gregory Clancey, History, FASS
  • Dr. Axel Gelfert, Philosophy, FASS
  • A/P Ryan Bishop, English Language & Literature, FASS
  • Dr. Ingrid Hoofd, Communications and New Media, FASS
  • Dr. John DiMoia, History, FASS
  • A/P John Phillips, English Language & Literature, FASS
  • Dr. Karen Winzoski, Political Science, FASS
  • Prof. V.V. Krishna, Asia Research Institute, NUS
  • Ms. Sorelle Henricus, English Language & Literature, FASS
  • A/P Lonce Wyse, Communications and New Media, FASS
  • A/P Cecilia Lim, Philosophy, FASS