Species of Biocapital

By Stefan Helmreich. 2008

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Several scholars in science studies have lately sought to theorize the contemporary join of capitalism and biotechnology. A variety of terms have been forwarded to name how ‘life’ in the age of genomics, stem cell research, and reproductive technology has become enmeshed in market dynamics, and no term has become as prominent as biocapital. This article offers a classification of articulations of this concept, arguing that definitions of biocapital centre (with varying emphasis) on two transformations: in biotic substance and in economic speculation and sentiment. Experimenting with ways of representing diverse species of biocapital, this essay offers a timeline of intellectual history, a genealogy of scholarship, and a theory worksheet, which last the reader is invited to use to generate their own accounting of the bioeconomy.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Pharmacology, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5e76ee8424a7a52beaff1ad66f42a9d31c14195a

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In Clinical Psychology

In Pharmacology

In Physiology

Citations in the corpus

Integrating the green economy, circular economy and bioeconomy in a strategic sustainability framework (2021, background): “Some literature has thus pointed out to the commodification of biological resources through biotechnologies, including implications related to power relations, information ownership and to ethical issues (Birch and Tyfield, 2013; Helmreich, 2008).”
THE EMERGENCE OF MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHY (2010, background): “Paul Rabinow’s biosociality, Marilyn Strathern’s call to think “after nature,” and various permutations of biocapital (Franklin and Lock 2003; Helmreich 2008; Sunder Rajan 2006) all lend themselves to multispecies inquiry.”
Life for Sale? The Politics of Lively Commodities (2013, background): “Recent work on biocapital and bioeconomies, or capital and economies wherein life is a central source of value (Cooper, 2008; Helmreich, 2008; Rajan, 2006; Rose, 2006; 2008), has tended to focus on pharmaceutical and biotechnological commodities such as microbes, tissues, and genomes.”
Theorizing the Bioeconomy (2013, background): “…clusters of theories or ‘‘species of biocapital’’: first, a Marxist-feminist cluster concerned with production and reproduction; and second, a WeberianMarxist cluster concerned with how ‘‘relations of production are described alongside accountings of ethical subjectivity’’ (Helmreich 2008, 471).”