1st Edition

Bioinformation Worlds and Futures

Edited By EJ Gonzalez-Polledo, Silvia Posocco Copyright 2022
    208 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    208 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This book sets out to define and consolidate the field of bioinformation studies in its transnational and global dimensions, drawing on debates in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology. It provides situated analyses of bioinformation journeys across domains and spheres of interpretation. As unprecedented amounts of data relating to biological processes and lives are collected, aggregated, traded and exchanged, infrastructural systems and machine learners produce real consequences as they turn indeterminate data into actionable decisions for states, companies, scientific researchers and consumers. Bioinformation accrues multiple values as it transverses multiple registers and domains, and as it is transformed from bodies to becoming a subject of analysis tied to particular social relations, promises, desires and futures. The volume harnesses the anthropological sensibility for situated, fine-grained, ethnographically grounded analysis to develop an interdisciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, political, social and ethical dimensions posed by bioinformation.

    1 Bioinformation Worlds and Futures: An Introduction

    EJ Gonzalez-Polledo and Silvia Posocco

    2 All the Data Creatures

    Tahani Nadim

    3 Capturing Genomes: The Friction and Flow of Bioinformation at the Smithsonian

    Adrian Van Allen

    4 The Kinship of Bioinformation: Relations in an Evolving Archive

    Resto Cruz, Penny Tinkler, and Laura Fenton

    5 Bioinformation In Formation: Inventing Medical Devices in Contemporary India

    Anisha Chadha

    6 Top_to_toe.ods: Bioinformation and the Politics of Rape Response

    Sylvia McKelvie

    7 American Bioinformation and U.S. Race Politics: The Values of Diverse Genetic Data

    Anna Jabloner

    8 Global E-Waste Epidemiology and Emerging Politics of Bioinformatic Extraction

    Peter Little

    9 Seeing Like an Airport: towards Interoperability in Contemporary Security

    Mark Maguire and Eileen Murphy

    10 Surrender: (Bio)information in the Era of the Pandemic in South Korea

    Kiheung Kim and Jongmi Kim

    Afterword

    Noah Tamarkin

    Biography

    EJ Gonzalez-Polledo teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. They are the author of Transitioning: Matter, Gender, Thought (Rowman and Littlefield international), and are currently developing research on global open biology movements and global histories of bioinformation.

    Silvia Posocco is an anthropologist based at Birkbeck, University of London. Posocco is the author of Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala (2014). Current projects include research on the archives of transnational adoption in the aftermath of genocide as well as new collaborative work on global histories of bioinformation.