Global Morality And Life Science Practices In Asia

This book explores the concept of life assemblages, drawing attention to the diverging ways in which societies share questions of what is a life worth living. In accordance with the urgency, gist and expression of such questions, societies deal with the regulation of new developments and practices in life science research and mobilise available political mechanisms to deliberate them.

Seventeen empirical case studies debate themes ranging from population planning, reproductive decision-making, genetic testing and genomics to human embryonic stem cell research and experimental stem cell therapies in Asian countries. The debates outlined also shed light on theoretical conceptualisations of eugenics, biopower, risk signatures, population studies, public deliberation, reproductive choice, bioethics, bionetworking, international science collaboration, public deliberation, research objects and scientific development in countries of different levels of wealth.

Review: Universalistic claims about the politics of life are challenged by this ambitious book on actual life science practices in Asia. Margaret Sleeboom-Faulkner, sometimes with Asian co-authors, has gathered together case studies on the practice of human population genomics, reproductive medicine, stem cells research in the region.

Drawing on ethnographic study of labs and clinics in Japan, China, S. Korea, and India, the book presents each case study as shaped by a particular life assemblage of technological, moral, and political forces in the country. Asian scientists, the book argues, are designing new experiments in the midst of conflicting moral and economic goals of science development, thus forming local conditions of life governance.

This volume is an ideal textbook that expands our understanding of how Asian sites have become global players in configuring the ethics and the politics of the life sciences today. - Aihwa Ong, Professor of Socio-cultural Anthropology, Berkeley University, US.