Territorial Issues of Biocapital Market Formation in Russia

• In Event: Innovation, Biocapital and the Making of Post-Genomic Medicine - III

Abstract

Anthropologist Stefan Helmreich distinguishes between two clusters of writing on biocapital. Marxist-Feminist cluster (Sarah Franklin, Margaret Lock, etc) is interested in changing substances of ‘life itself’ that shape histories of sex/ gender and race. In the Weberian-Marxist cluster (Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Eugene Thacker, etc), relations of production are described alongside accounts of ethical subjectivity. In order to disclose local specifics of biocapital globalization we propose to draw on Lujo Brentano – early representative of historical school of economics, who disputed with Marx and Weber. Speaking about the origin of capitalism, he focused on issues of international politics and territorial dynamics, translocation of resources ‘from country to town’.
Russian genetic counselors and patients raise similar questions of state politics and internal migration in their interviews on the problems of genetic diagnosis. They notice asymmetries in the local biocapital market. Foreign biotechnology companies have access to the Russian market, while patients have no real possibilities to bring biomaterials outside Russia.
Genetic counselors talk about migration of families with established genetic risk to major cities. Genetic diagnoses officially exist only in big cities because physicians and patient communities are familiar with them. Besides, incomes in large cities are higher, which makes management of genetic risks more available for families.
Thus, some important issues of local biocapital market development are connected not only with the Weberian issue of formation of a specific ethos, or the Marxist topic of biological substances and technologies that shape sociality – they also refer to ‘Brentanian’ question concerning territorial aspects of biocapitalism.
The reported study was funded by RSF according to the research project No 18-78-10132

Authors

• Sergey Shevchenko, Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences; Pirogov Russian National Research Medical Univ

• Sofya Lavrentyeva, RAS Institute of Philosophy

• Pavel Tishchenko, RAS Institute of Philosophy