Bioinformation Worlds and Futures (Routledge Studies in Anthropology)

This book sets out to define and consolidate the field of bioinformation studies in its transnational and global dimensions, drawing on debates in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology. It provides situated analyses of bioinformation journeys across domains and spheres of interpretation. As unprecedented amounts of data relating to biological processes and lives are collected, aggregated, traded and exchanged, infrastructural systems and machine learners produce real consequences as they turn indeterminate data into actionable decisions for states, companies, scientific researchers and consumers. Bioinformation accrues multiple values as it transverses multiple registers and domains, and as it is transformed from bodies to becoming a subject of analysis tied to particular social relations, promises, desires and futures. The volume harnesses the anthropological sensibility for situated, fine-grained, ethnographically grounded analysis to develop an interdisciplinary dialogue on the conceptual, political, social and ethical dimensions posed by bioinformation.

EJ Gonzalez-Polledo teaches anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. They are the author of Transitioning: Matter, Gender, Thought (Rowman and Littlefield international), and are currently developing research on global open biology movements and global histories of bioinformation.

Silvia Posocco is an anthropologist based at Birkbeck, University of London. Posocco is the author of Secrecy and Insurgency: Socialities and Knowledge Practices in Guatemala (2014). Current projects include research on the archives of transnational adoption in the aftermath of genocide as well as new collaborative work on global histories of bioinformation.