Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems

489 Pages·2004·2.84 MB·English

GLOBAL ASSEMBLAGES
GLOBAL
ASSEMBLAGES
Technology, Politics,
and Ethics as
Anthropological
Problems
EDITED BY
AIHWA ONG
AND
STEPHEN J. COLLIER
©(cid:561)2005(cid:561)by(cid:561)Blackwell(cid:561)Publishing(cid:561)Ltd(cid:561)
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CONTENTS
Notes on Contributors viii
Acknowledgments xiii
PART I INTRODUCTION 1
1 Global Assemblages, Anthropological Problems 3
Stephen J. Collier and Aihwa Ong
2 On Regimes of Living 22
Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff
3 Midst Anthropology’s Problems 40
Paul Rabinow
PART II BIOSCIENCE AND BIOLOGICAL LIFE 55
ETHICSOF TECHNOSCIENTIFIC OBJECTS 57
4 Stem Cells RUs: Emergent Life Forms and the Global Biological 59
Sarah Franklin
5 Operability, Bioavailability, and Exception 79
Lawrence Cohen
6 The Iceland Controversy: Reflections on the Transnational
Market of Civic Virtue 91
G´ısli Pa´lsson and Paul Rabinow
v
contents
VALUE ANDVALUES 105
7 Time, Money, and Biodiversity 107
GeoffreyC. Bowker
8 Antiretroviral Globalism, Biopolitics, and Therapeutic
Citizenship 124
Vinh-kim Nguyen
9 The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics and the Global
Traffic in ‘‘Fresh’’ Organs 145
NancyScheper-Hughes
PART III SOCIALTECHNOLOGIES AND DISCIPLINES 169
STANDARDS 171
10 Standards and Person-Making in East Central Europe 173
Elizabeth C. Dunn
11 The Private Life of Numbers: Pharmaceutical Marketing
in Post-Welfare Argentina 194
AndrewLakoff
12 Implementing Empirical Knowledge in Anthropology and
Islamic Accountancy 214
Bill Maurer
PRACTICES OF CALCULATING SELVES 233
13 Cultures of Expertise and the Management of Globalization:
Toward the Re-Functioning of Ethnography 235
Douglas R.Holmes and GeorgeE. Marcus
14 The Discipline of Speculators 253
Caitlin Zaloom
15 Cultures on the Brink: Reengineering the Soul of
Capitalism – On a Global Scale 270
Kris Olds and NigelThrift
MANAGING UNCERTAINTY 291
16 Heterarchies of Value: Distributing Intelligence and Organizing
Diversity in a New Media Startup 293
Monique Girardand David Stark
17 Failure as an Endpoint 320
Hirokazu Miyazaki and Annelise Riles
vi
contents
PART IV GOVERNMENTALITYAND POLITICS 333
GOVERNING POPULATIONS 335
18 Ecologies of Expertise: Assembling Flows, Managing Citizenship 337
AihwaOng
19 Globalization and Population Governance in China 354
Susan Greenhalgh
20 Budgets and Biopolitics 373
Stephen J. Collier
SECURITY, LEGITIMACY, JUSTICE 391
21 State and Urban Space in Brazil: From Modernist Planning
to Democratic Interventions 393
Teresa Caldeira and JamesHolston
22 The Garrison–Entrepoˆt: A Mode of Governing in the Chad Basin 417
JanetRoitman
CITIZENSHIPAND ETHICS 437
23 Biological Citizenship 439
Nikolas Roseand Carlos Novas
24 Robust Knowledge and Fragile Futures 464
MarilynStrathern
Index 482
vii
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Geoffrey C. Bowker is Director, Center for Science, Technology, and Society, Santa
Clara University. He studies political, organizational, and social factors in the design
ofscientificcyber-infrastructure,mostnotablyinthedomainsofbiodiversityscience
andthegeosciences.HeisauthorwithLeighStarofSortingThingsOut:Classification
and Practice and has just completed a manuscript entitled Memory Practices in the
Sciences.
Teresa Caldeira is Associate Professor of Anthropologyat the Universityof Califor-
nia,Irvine.Herresearchhasfocusedontheinterconnectionsamongurbanviolence,
spatial segregation, and democratization. Currently, she is investigating the re-
creation of gender and generational roles among Sa˜o Paulo youth in the context of
increasing urban violence and of unprecedented access to information and to new
technologies. Her book City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sa˜o Paulo
won the 2001 Senior Book Award of the American Ethnological Society.
Lawrence Cohen is Associate Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and
of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His
work engages rhetorics and practices of life and politics in contemporary India and
includescloseengagementswithtopicsrangingfromsenilityandsame-sexdesireto
surgical operations, political violence, and the fashion industry. He is the author of
the award-winning No Aging in India: Alzheimer’s, the Bad Family and Other Modern
Things.
Stephen J. Collier is a Faculty member in the Graduate Program in International
Affairs, TheNew School University. His interests include neoliberalism, postsocialist
viii
notes on contributors
transformation, and urban change. He is currently completing a book, Post Soviet
Social, on contemporary Russia.
Elizabeth C. Dunn is Assistant Professor of Geography and International Affairs,
UniversityofColorado,Boulder.Herinterestsincludestandardsandstandardization,
postsocialist eastern Europe, food politics, and the economic and social origins of
food-borne disease. Forthcoming publications include ‘‘Trojan Pig,’’ ‘‘A Steak is an
OutcomeSpace:TravelingFacts,NegotiatedMeaning,andtheSocialConstructionof
Safe Meat,’’ in Traveling Facts, and Privatizing Poland: Transforming Work and Person-
hood after Socialism.
SarahFranklinisProfessorofSocialStudiesofBiomedicineattheLondonSchoolof
Economics. She is author or coauthor of Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of
AssistedConception,TechnologiesofProcreation:KinshipintheAgeofAssistedConception,
and Global Nature, Global Culture, and co-editor of Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural
Studies, Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation, Relative
Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, and Remaking Life and Death: Towards an Anthro-
pology of the Biosciences, and is currently completing a book about cloning entitled
Dolly Mixtures. Her most recent ethnographic research has been based at two pre-
implantation genetic diagnosis clinics in London and in Leeds.
MoniqueGirardisAssociateDirectoroftheCenteronOrganizationalInnovationat
ColumbiaUniversity.Hercurrentresearchaddressestherelationshipbetweencollab-
orative organization and interactive technologies with an emphasis on how these
new technologies are providing virtual venues forcommunication between citizens,
architects,urbandesigners,advocacygroups,anddecision-makers.Girardiscoauthor
(with Francesca Polletta and David Stark) of ‘‘Policy Made Public: Technologies of
Deliberation and Representation in Rebuilding Lower Manhattan.’’
SusanGreenhalghisProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityofCalifornia,Irvine.
Her work examines population as a domain of modern power, the role of modern
scienceandtechnologyinconstitutinglife,andtheworkingsofstatesandtheirpolicies
andprograms.SheisauthorofUndertheMedicalGaze:FactsandFictionsofChronicPain,
GoverningbyNumbers:PopulationintheMakingofModernChina,andPopulationandPower
inPost-DengChina:Institutions&Biopolitics(withEdwinA.Winckler).
Douglas R. Holmes is Professor of Anthropology at Binghamton University. His
research focuses on advanced European integration and the challenges of investi-
gating this kind of complex technocratic phenomenon ethnographically. He is the
author of Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism and Cultural
Disenchantments: Worker Peasants in Northeast Italy.
JamesHolstonisAssociateProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityofCalifornia,
SanDiego.Hisresearchfocusesoncitizenship,democracy,law,violence,architecture
and planning, as well as on new religions. He is currently writing a book on
the insurgence of democratic citizenship in the urban periphery of Sa˜o Paulo and
its contradiction in violence and misrule of law under political democracy. His
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notes on contributors
publications include The Modernist City:An Anthropological Critique of Bras´ılia and the
editedvolume Cities and Citizenship.
Andrew Lakoff is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Science Studies at the
University of California, San Diego. His forthcoming book, Pharmaceutical Reason:
Technology and the Human at the Modern Periphery, examines the role of the global
circulationofpharmaceuticalsinthespreadofbiologicalmodelsofhumanbehavior
and thought.
GeorgeE.MarcusisJosephD.JamailProfessorandChair,DepartmentofAnthropol-
ogy,RiceUniversity.Heisinterestedinthechangingnatureofethnographicmethods
andwriting,andhisresearchhasconcernedtheworkandthoughtofvariouskindsof
elites, experts, and intellectuals operating within changing forms of capitalism and
modernity. Recent publications include Ethnography through Thick and Thin, Critical
AnthropologyNow,andtheeightvolumesoftheLateEditionsseriesofannuals.
Bill Maurer is Associate Professor of Anthropology, Universityof California, Irvine.
Heiscurrentlyworkingonananthropologyofmoneyandfinance.Heistheauthor
of Recharting the Caribbean: Land, Law and Citizenship in the British Virgin Islands, co-
editorofGenderMatters:Re-ReadingMichelleZ.Rosaldo,andco-editorofGlobalization
under Construction: Governmentality, Law, and Identity.
HirokazuMiyazakiisanAssistantProfessorofAnthropology,CornellUniversity.He
haswrittenontheplaceofhopeinknowledgeformationdrawingonhisresearchin
Fiji and Japan. He is the author of The Method of Hope and is completing a book
entitled Economy of Dreams: Anthropology, Finance, and Japan.
Vinh-kim Nguyen is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill
University. He has worked with community-based organizations in West Africa
since 1994 on expanding access to treatment for HIV, informing his anthropological
research on epidemics and politics. He focuses on emerging forms of therapeutic
citizenship, humanitarian intervention, and biopolitics, and is currentlywriting a
book on these themes.
Carlos Novas is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths
College, University of London, funded by the Wellcome Trust Programme on
BiomedicalEthics. Heisstudying thepracticesof theselfand thepoliticaleconomy
associatedwith the rise of the new genetics.
KrisOldsisAssociateProfessorofGeography,UniversityofWisconsin-Madison.His
research focuses on the geographical organization of power and global networks in
relation to contemporary urban transformations. Recent publications include (as
author)GlobalizationandUrbanChange:Capital,Culture,andPacificRimMega-Projects,
and(asco-editor)TheGlobalizationofChineseBusinessFirms,andGlobalizationandthe
Asia-Pacific: Contested Territories.
Aihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology and Southeast Asian Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley. She has conducted fieldwork in Southeast Asia,
x
notes on contributors
SouthChina,andCalifornia,andhercurrentinterestsconcerngovernment,risk,and
security in Asian cities. Recent works include the award-winning Flexible Citizenship,
andBuddhaisHiding:Refugees,Citizenship,theNewAmerica.Hernextbook isentitled
Deterritorializing Citizenship.
G´ısli Pa´lsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland and the
Universityof Oslo. His research focuses on the social implications of biotechnology,
human–environmental relations, and Inuit genetic history. Pa´lsson has done anthro-
pologicalfieldworkinIcelandandTheRepublicofCapeVerde.Amonghisbooksare
The Textual Life of Savants, Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, Images of
Contemporary Iceland, and Writing on Ice: The Ethnographic Notebooks of Vilhjalmur
Stefansson.
PaulRabinowisProfessorofAnthropologyattheUniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley.
He has done fieldwork in Morocco and in biotechnologycompanies and genomics
laboratories in California and France. His most recent books are Essays on the
Anthropology of Reason, French DNA, Trouble in Purgatory, and Anthropos Today.
Annelise Riles is Professor of Law and Professor of Anthropology at Cornell
University.Herresearchfocusesonrationality,expertise,andtheoryasethnographic
subjects. Her first book, The Network Inside Out, concerned knowledge practices
within global nongovernmental organizations and at United Nations global
conferences. An edited collection, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge, is
forthcoming. She is currently completing a book based on fieldwork among
regulators of the global economy and legal theorists concerning relations of means
to ends.
Janet Roitman is presently at the CNRS-MALD, Paris. Her interests include
economic regulation and social transformations in the Chad Basin. Recent publica-
tions include Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central
Africa, and ‘‘Productivity in the Margins: the Reconstitution of State Power in
the Chad Basin,’’ in an edited collection entitled Anthropologies at the Margins of the
State.
NikolasRoseisProfessorofSociologyandDirectoroftheBIOSCentrefortheStudy
of Bioscience, Biomedicine and Biotechnology at the London School of Economics
andPoliticalScience.Hiscurrentresearchconcernsbiologicalandgeneticpsychiatry
and behavioral neuroscience, and its social, ethical, cultural, and legal context and
implications. His most recent book is Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought,
and his next book is entitled The Politics of Life Itself.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University
of California, Berkeley, where she directs the graduate program in Critical Studies
in Medicine, Science, and the Body. She has conducted research on mother love
and child death in Brazil, madness and culture in rural Ireland, AIDS and sexual
citizenship in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States; violence and truth in the New
SouthAfrica;deathsquads,democracy,andtheexecutionofBrazilianstreetchildren;
xi