Life as surplus : biotechnology and capitalism in the neoliberal era
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Life as surplus : biotechnology and capitalism in the neoliberal era
（In vivo : the cultural mediations of biomedical science）（A McLellan book）
University of Washington Press, c2008
- : pbk
Related Bibliography 1 items
Available at / 11 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-211) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Focusing on the period between the 1970s and the present, Life as Surplus is a pointed and important study of the relationship between politics, economics, science, and cultural values in the United States today. Melinda Cooper demonstrates that the history of biotechnology cannot be understood without taking into account the simultaneous rise of neoliberalism as a political force and an economic policy. From the development of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s to the second Bush administration's policies on stem cell research, Cooper connects the utopian polemic of free-market capitalism with growing internal contradictions of the commercialized life sciences.
The biotech revolution relocated economic production at the genetic, microbial, and cellular level. Taking as her point of departure the assumption that life has been drawn into the circuits of value creation, Cooper underscores the relations between scientific, economic, political, and social practices. In penetrating analyses of Reagan-era science policy, the militarization of the life sciences, HIV politics, pharmaceutical imperialism, tissue engineering, stem cell science, and the pro-life movement, the author examines the speculative impulses that have animated the growth of the bioeconomy.
At the very core of the new post-industrial economy is the transformation of biological life into surplus value. Life as Surplus offers a clear assessment of both the transformative, therapeutic dimensions of the contemporary life sciences and the violence, obligation, and debt servitude crystallizing around the emerging bioeconomy.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Life Beyond the Limits: Inventing the Bioeconomy
2. On Pharmaceutical Empire: AIDS, Security, and Exorcism
3. Preempting Emergence: The Biological Turn in the War on Terror
Intermezzo
4. Contortions: Tissue Engineering and the Topological Body
5. Labors of Regeneration: Stem Cells and the Embryoid Bodies of Capital
6. The Unborn Born Again: Neo-Imperialism, the Evangelical Right, and the Culture of Life
Epilogue
Notes
References
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
