Pharmaceutical Science in Action

• In Event: Travelling Knowledge (II): Health, Disease and Pharma

Abstract

When pharmaceutical companies engage in marketing, they are sometimes creating networks and reshaping actors at the largest scale. These networks establish pieces of medical knowledge and make technologies effective. They also provide pathways that carry knowledge and energy that makes it move to where it is most useful to them.

For the past decade, I have been opening black boxes in pharma’s marketing/research structures and finding ghosts, zombies, sirens and trolls who make them successful. This presentation explores the skilled work that goes on to make those structures both black and boxlike. Black boxes take on a new appearance when we understand them as made so by phantoms. More generally, actor-network theory is a useful tool for understanding marketing at the largest scale. Seeing pharma at work allows us to see pharmaceutical science in action, but also to see pharmaceutical science put into action.

Author

• Sergio Sismondo, Queen's University