Clinical Labor
Tissue Donors and Research Subjects in the Global Bioeconomy
Duke University Press
2014
Présentation de l'éditeur
Forms of embodied labor, such as surrogacy and participation in
clinical trials, are central to biomedical innovation, but they are
rarely considered as labor. Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby take on
that project, analyzing what they call "clinical labor," and asking what
such an analysis might indicate about the organization of the
bioeconomy and the broader organization of labor and value today. At the
same time, they reflect on the challenges that clinical labor might
pose to some of the founding assumptions of classical, Marxist, and
post-Fordist theories of labor.
Cooper and Waldby examine the rapidly expanding transnational labor markets surrounding assisted reproduction and experimental drug trials. As they discuss, the pharmaceutical industry demands ever greater numbers of trial subjects to meet its innovation imperatives. The assisted reproductive market grows as more and more households look to third-party providers for fertility services and sectors of the biomedical industry seek reproductive tissues rich in stem cells. Cooper and Waldby trace the historical conditions, political economy, and contemporary trajectory of clinical labor. Ultimately, they reveal clinical labor to be emblematic of labor in twenty-first-century neoliberal economies.
Cooper and Waldby examine the rapidly expanding transnational labor markets surrounding assisted reproduction and experimental drug trials. As they discuss, the pharmaceutical industry demands ever greater numbers of trial subjects to meet its innovation imperatives. The assisted reproductive market grows as more and more households look to third-party providers for fertility services and sectors of the biomedical industry seek reproductive tissues rich in stem cells. Cooper and Waldby trace the historical conditions, political economy, and contemporary trajectory of clinical labor. Ultimately, they reveal clinical labor to be emblematic of labor in twenty-first-century neoliberal economies.
Melinda Cooper is a Senior Research Fellow in the
Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney.
She is the author of Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era.
Catherine Waldby is a Professorial Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is coauthor, with Herbert Gottweis and Brian Salter, of The Global Politics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science: Regenerative Medicine in Transition and, with Robert Mitchell, of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism, which is also published by Duke University Press.
Catherine Waldby is a Professorial Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. She is coauthor, with Herbert Gottweis and Brian Salter, of The Global Politics of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Science: Regenerative Medicine in Transition and, with Robert Mitchell, of Tissue Economies: Blood, Organs, and Cell Lines in Late Capitalism, which is also published by Duke University Press.
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