The Value of Transnational Medical Research : Labour, Participation and Care

The Value of Transnational Research re-thinks the bioethical distinction between paid and unpaid research services in the light of the social and material organisation of medical research practices. Bringing together sociologists, anthropologists and activists, the volume throws new light on the relations between knowledge practices and their public good benefits on the one hand and their commercialisation in embedded market forms on the other.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy.

What is the value of medical research? With contributions from anthropologists, sociologists and activists, this approach brings into focus the forms of value – social, epistemic, and economic – that are involved in medical research practices and how these values intersect with everyday living. Though their work covers wide empirical ground –from HIV trials in Kenya and drug donation programs in Tanzania to industry-academic collaborations in the British National Health Service – the authors share a commitment to understanding the practices of medical research as embedded in both local social worlds and global markets. Their collective concern is to rethink the conventional ethical demarcations betwweenpaid and unpaid research services in light of the social and material organisation of medical research practices. . Rather than warn against economic incursions into medical knowledge and health practice, or, alternatively, the reduction of local experience to the standards of bioethics, we hope to illuminate the array of practices, knowledges, and techniques through which the value of medical research is brought into being.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy.