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Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life
Aihwa Ong
€ 34.99
€ 33.95
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Description for Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life
Paperback. In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong traces the revolutionary scientific developments in Asia by investigating how biomedical centers in Biopolis, Singapore and China mobilize ethnicized "Asian" bodies and health data for genomic research. Num Pages: 312 pages, 10 illustrations. BIC Classification: 1F; HBJF; JFMG; JHMC; PDR. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 153 x 229 x 21. Weight in Grams: 458.
In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized Asian bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore's ethnic-stratified databases that come to represent majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering Asia itself as a shifting entity. In Ong's analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population's genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond.
Product Details
Publisher
Duke University Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2016
Condition
New
Number of Pages
312
Place of Publication
North Carolina, United States
ISBN
9780822362647
SKU
V9780822362647
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-28
About Aihwa Ong
Aihwa Ong is Robert H. Lowie Distinguished Chair in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, the author of Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty and Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, and the coeditor of Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate, all also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews for Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life
The productive uncertainties and ethnic heuristics that Aihwa Ong examines in her study of Singapore's Biopolis enrich our understanding of ethnicity in postgenomic Asia. These are the major contributions of Fungible Life.
Wen-Ching Sung
American Ethnologist
Ong skillfully provides an accessible and lucid account of the intersection of ethnicity, biopolitics and uncertainties in Asia's bioscientific world. Fungible Life is a valuable addition to fields such as the anthropology of Asia, medical anthropology, and science and technology studies. It is also highly accessible for readers of various levels.
Yifeng Cai
Social Anthropology
Fungible Life is an important addition to the growing literature in area-speci?c science studies, and an important intervention in the anthropology of science scholarship on racialised science. . . . Well worth the investment for anyone interested in how race, ethnicity and science are made in Asia today.
Katherine A. Mason
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Ong's book is a deep dive in the complex role of the state, universities, firms, research stars, and knowledge about genetics in shaping the development of Singapore, in particular, as a key space in the development of scientific knowledge. After reading it you can better understand why universities like Duke and Imperial College seek (and need) to have a formal institutional presence in Singapore, and in association with key national partner universities like NUS and NTU. The Ong book, thus, provides insights on the geographical-, historical-, and sectoral -specific developments that these universities are currently navigating.
Kris Olds
Inside Higher Ed
This book is an essential contribution to a comparative anthropology of biosentinels through a refined and accessible ethnography of two biotech centers in Singapore and Shenzhen, showing how a future is taking shape in which Asia will play a prominent role.
Frederic Keck
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Embracing a new frontier, Ong's latest work tackles our fear of the unknown in genomic research, concerns about multiple levels of research ethics, and our curiosity about genomic research's implications for Chinese and Asian identity, which in turn has implications for human identity as a whole. This book on biomedical research is suitable for graduate students and scholars interested in the production of knowledge, science and technology studies, medical anthropology and sociology, ethnic studies, public health, and broadly Asian Studies.
Fang Xu
New Books Asia
Anyone interested in cosmopolitan flows of knowledge and risk will find this book of value, as the phenomena that it describes and the methodologies that Ong uses seem to me to be readily transferable. . . . I particularly enjoy the way Ong fits the situated nature of her own authorship, including her Asian background, her family history of cancer and so on, seamlessly into her account. . . . [A] beautiful and engaging piece of writing and an important contribution to a wide spectrum of knowledge.
Flora Samuel
Times Higher Education
Wen-Ching Sung
American Ethnologist
Ong skillfully provides an accessible and lucid account of the intersection of ethnicity, biopolitics and uncertainties in Asia's bioscientific world. Fungible Life is a valuable addition to fields such as the anthropology of Asia, medical anthropology, and science and technology studies. It is also highly accessible for readers of various levels.
Yifeng Cai
Social Anthropology
Fungible Life is an important addition to the growing literature in area-speci?c science studies, and an important intervention in the anthropology of science scholarship on racialised science. . . . Well worth the investment for anyone interested in how race, ethnicity and science are made in Asia today.
Katherine A. Mason
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Ong's book is a deep dive in the complex role of the state, universities, firms, research stars, and knowledge about genetics in shaping the development of Singapore, in particular, as a key space in the development of scientific knowledge. After reading it you can better understand why universities like Duke and Imperial College seek (and need) to have a formal institutional presence in Singapore, and in association with key national partner universities like NUS and NTU. The Ong book, thus, provides insights on the geographical-, historical-, and sectoral -specific developments that these universities are currently navigating.
Kris Olds
Inside Higher Ed
This book is an essential contribution to a comparative anthropology of biosentinels through a refined and accessible ethnography of two biotech centers in Singapore and Shenzhen, showing how a future is taking shape in which Asia will play a prominent role.
Frederic Keck
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Embracing a new frontier, Ong's latest work tackles our fear of the unknown in genomic research, concerns about multiple levels of research ethics, and our curiosity about genomic research's implications for Chinese and Asian identity, which in turn has implications for human identity as a whole. This book on biomedical research is suitable for graduate students and scholars interested in the production of knowledge, science and technology studies, medical anthropology and sociology, ethnic studies, public health, and broadly Asian Studies.
Fang Xu
New Books Asia
Anyone interested in cosmopolitan flows of knowledge and risk will find this book of value, as the phenomena that it describes and the methodologies that Ong uses seem to me to be readily transferable. . . . I particularly enjoy the way Ong fits the situated nature of her own authorship, including her Asian background, her family history of cancer and so on, seamlessly into her account. . . . [A] beautiful and engaging piece of writing and an important contribution to a wide spectrum of knowledge.
Flora Samuel
Times Higher Education