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Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine
Kaushik Sunder Rajan
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Description for Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine
Paperback. Kaushik Sunder Rajan traces the structure and operation of what he calls pharmocracy-a concept explaining the global hegemony of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. He outlines pharmocracy's logic in two case studies from contemporary India to demonstrate the stakes of its intersection with health, politics, democracy, and global capital. Series: Experimental Futures. Num Pages: 360 pages, 1 illustration. BIC Classification: 1FK; HBJF; JHMC. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 154 x 228 x 26. Weight in Grams: 510.
Continuing his pioneering theoretical explorations into the relationships among biosciences, the market, and political economy, Kaushik Sunder Rajan introduces the concept of pharmocracy to explain the structure and operation of the global hegemony of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. He reveals pharmocracy's logic in two case studies from contemporary India: the controversial introduction of an HPV vaccine in 2010, and the Indian Patent Office's denial of a patent for an anticancer drug in 2006 and ensuing legal battles. In each instance health was appropriated by capital and transformed from an embodied state of well-being into an abstract category made subject to capital's interests. These cases demonstrate the precarious situation in which pharmocracy places democracy, as India's accommodation of global pharmaceutical regulatory frameworks pits the interests of its citizens against those of international capital. Sunder Rajan's insights into this dynamic make clear the high stakes of pharmocracy's intersection with health, politics, and democracy.
Product Details
Publisher
Duke University Press
Format
Paperback
Publication date
2017
Series
Experimental Futures
Condition
New
Weight
510g
Number of Pages
344
Place of Publication
North Carolina, United States
ISBN
9780822363279
SKU
V9780822363279
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-50
About Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and the author of Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, also published by Duke University Press.
Reviews for Pharmocracy: Value, Politics, and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine
Pharmocracy is an important discussion of events involving the Indian government, pharmaceutical companies-Indian and multinational-and civil society organizations. . . . A valuable addition to the social science of global medicine, its political economy, and its limitations.
Roger Jeffery
American Journal of Sociology
Presents an impressively holistic view of the world. . . . There is much to be praised in this book. The aims are very ambitious, and Sunder Rajan lays out no fewer than nineteen points of intersection around value, knowledge, and representation in the introduction. . . . It is in these representations of scale that Sunder Rajan's work really shines.
Jennifer J. Carroll
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Pharmocracy is an important and essential book, one that pays attention to these multiple iterations of power across institutions, industries, legal regimes, and place. It is one of the first ethnographic studies that articulates the politics of global biomedicine through several sites of analysis: clinical research, treatment access, trade-related intellectual property, and the future of generic drug manufacturing.
Kristin Peterson
Biosocieties
Pharmocracy draws attention to the myriad forms of labor mobilized by the pharmaceutical (legal, clinical, volunteer, affective, and political) as well as the unruly properties of biological life itself and the growing ability to harness its (re)generative energies. These are vital questions, given how much pharmaceuticals have come to matter-as economic force, governmental conundrum, and active agent in the lives of humans and increasingly the environment- and to Pharmocracy we owe the debt of having begun to ask them.
Vinh-Kim Nguyen
Current Anthropology
Kaushik Sunder Rajan's highly anticipated book Pharmocracy is a rich, multilayered look at the pharmaceutical industry in India. . . . Sunder Rajan provides an insightful analysis of the regimes of value of the Indian pharmaceutical industry as it has become increasing aligned with the multinational pharmaceutical industry.
Anne Pollock
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Through extensive ethnographic interviewing of a range of individuals from patients to parents, from the producer of generic drugs in India to civil society advocates in both the Gleevec and Gardasil cases, Pharmocracy provides a rich account of some of the more complex emotive concerns surrounding these moral, legal and financial questions of knowledge, value and politics. These are substantiated with in-depth triangulation of policy and legal documentation and philosophical thought. It is expertly researched and presented by a world-leading academic in the field who has devoted considerable research to the moral and philosophical concerns of the biomedical.
Clare Wenham
LSE Review of Books
Roger Jeffery
American Journal of Sociology
Presents an impressively holistic view of the world. . . . There is much to be praised in this book. The aims are very ambitious, and Sunder Rajan lays out no fewer than nineteen points of intersection around value, knowledge, and representation in the introduction. . . . It is in these representations of scale that Sunder Rajan's work really shines.
Jennifer J. Carroll
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Pharmocracy is an important and essential book, one that pays attention to these multiple iterations of power across institutions, industries, legal regimes, and place. It is one of the first ethnographic studies that articulates the politics of global biomedicine through several sites of analysis: clinical research, treatment access, trade-related intellectual property, and the future of generic drug manufacturing.
Kristin Peterson
Biosocieties
Pharmocracy draws attention to the myriad forms of labor mobilized by the pharmaceutical (legal, clinical, volunteer, affective, and political) as well as the unruly properties of biological life itself and the growing ability to harness its (re)generative energies. These are vital questions, given how much pharmaceuticals have come to matter-as economic force, governmental conundrum, and active agent in the lives of humans and increasingly the environment- and to Pharmocracy we owe the debt of having begun to ask them.
Vinh-Kim Nguyen
Current Anthropology
Kaushik Sunder Rajan's highly anticipated book Pharmocracy is a rich, multilayered look at the pharmaceutical industry in India. . . . Sunder Rajan provides an insightful analysis of the regimes of value of the Indian pharmaceutical industry as it has become increasing aligned with the multinational pharmaceutical industry.
Anne Pollock
Medical Anthropology Quarterly
Through extensive ethnographic interviewing of a range of individuals from patients to parents, from the producer of generic drugs in India to civil society advocates in both the Gleevec and Gardasil cases, Pharmocracy provides a rich account of some of the more complex emotive concerns surrounding these moral, legal and financial questions of knowledge, value and politics. These are substantiated with in-depth triangulation of policy and legal documentation and philosophical thought. It is expertly researched and presented by a world-leading academic in the field who has devoted considerable research to the moral and philosophical concerns of the biomedical.
Clare Wenham
LSE Review of Books