Biocapital by Kaushik Rajan and the Network culture of Terranova - Essay Example

Biocapital by Kaushik Rajan and the Network culture of Terranova 1. Introduction: This paper seeks to analyze and discuss the certain parts of Biocapital by Kaushik Rajan and the Network culture of Terranova. Specifically given questions will be answer in completing the paper. Background: Knowing something about the authors and the nature of their work would point the reader in the proper perspective. Starting with Rajan, let us get introduce some information about his person. Rajan (2005) appeared to have learned in his investigation about the relationship between science and capitalism in different ways by reason of his background. Rajan (2005) claimed to be initially trained as a biologist, doing wet lab molecular biology research, and received a Masterâl degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford in 1997. Deciding that he did not want to pursue a career in laboratory-based experimental research, he shifted into the humanities and social sciences, and obtained his Ph.D. in the History and Social Studies of Science and Technology from the STS Department at MIT in 2002. His background in biology deeply informed his choice of dissertation research topic. He claimed to have initially started following the Human Genome Project in mid-199 and that this was a particularly interesting time to be following the project, which had a year previously resolved into a race to sequence the human genome between the public-funded five-nation Human Genome Consortium and the private sector genome company, Celera Genomics (Rajan, 2005) (Paraphrasing made). He appeared to have found the taking out patents on gene sequences, where he said that the genome sequencing race was not just a race for credit, but was a race for ownership as well, and the legal, institutional and market contexts within which this research was being performed was evidently crucial to understanding the larger technoscientific event that was unfolding (Rajan, 2005) (Paraphrasing made). On the other hand Terranova’s work on Network Culture takes a study of the reality of free labour, creative labour and immaterial labour in the context of the digital economy. 2. Questions and Answers Q1. What does Rajan learn in his investigations in Hyderabad and Bombay, in Silicon Valley, and in the company GenEd about the relationship between science and capitalism, and between nationalism and globalization? Briefly describe his investigations in each of these locations and summarize what he learns about these relationships in each instance. Rajan (2005) claimed that his interest in sequence the human genome and the subsequent events in 1999 led his interest in corporate genomics, and he started especially following the business practices and strategies of genome companies in the United States. He claimed that it became clear to him very quickly that these practices and strategies could not themselves be adequately conceptualized without situating them in the larger context of the drug development marketplaces that they were inserted into. He thus said that this not involved understanding the specificities of the drug development industry (marked, in the United States especially, by the immense time, risk, uncertainty and capital investment required to bring a therapeutic molecule to market), but also involved understanding and theorizing the market, and contemporary capitalism, more generally. As he performed his research, it became clear to me that genomics was a constantly shifting referent, especially once the working draft sequence of the human genome was generated in mid-2000 by both the public genome project and by Celera, and attention shifted to ‘post’-genomics, which involved making biological sense of the huge amount of information that had been generated by the sequencing efforts. He thus found that it was equally clear that the market was also a shifting referent and that what constituted sound market logic was constantly contested, negotiated and at stake, especially through the period of incredible speculative ferment of the dot com boom that many genomic developments were situated in the midst of, and the subsequent bust that saw the dramatic collapse of this seemingly infallible speculative bubble (Paraphrasing made). What Rajan meant in simpler terms was that capitalism as a conceptual construct was itself very much at stake and demanding theorization - it is not an eternal and essential systemic construct, but is rather completely historically specific and mutable. He found further, that neither the life sciences nor market systems completely determined the other, though the relationships between the two were tangible, significant and required resolution (Rajan, 2005) (Paraphrasing made). Rajan (2005) claimed that the contemporary historical conjuncture that I was studying, then, was marked by a number of interrelated events and emergence as follows: Firstly, the increased corporatization of life science research; Secondly, the emergence of new technologies and epistemologies within the life sciences, such as, significantly, genomics; and Thirdly, the fact that these technoscientific and market emergences were not simply occurring in the United States, but rather globally. He called his work the Biocapital in the late 20th century, which asks questions of the nature and manner of the co-production of economic and epistemic value in the life sciences today. He also claimed that in the former register, his work has followed a number of actors - scientists, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and policymakers involved in genomics research and market development in a range of sites in the US and India (in the US, primarily in the Bay Area; in India, primarily in Delhi, Bombay and Hyderabad) but in the latter register, his work engages social theories of epistemology, political economy, ethics, subjectivity, language and value (most directly the analyses of Karl Marx, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida), in order to provide ways to think about a current moment in world history that is significantly shaped by technoscientific capitalism (Rajan, 2005) (Paraphrasing made). Q2. What does Tiziana Terranova explore in her chapter on ‘Free Labour’? Briefly explain how she shows us exploitation is still at work in this new world of information? What does she mean by ‘biological turn’ in her chapter of Self Control? Briefly explain. In her books Tiziana Terranova appears to recognizing that the complexity of labour in the digital economy is characterised by ‘free labour’ invested in the production of many products in the digital economy and this is evident in the case of free and open source software. She also saw the reality of the idea of immaterial labour, where she tried to point out about the existence of a material foundation that creates the structures of cultural and economic flows of the network society, and hence the free market principles of capitalism get reflected. The best example that could used as example here is where the users of the internet may be necessarily giving their labour free of charge by their uploading their materials and making their comments to certain issued. The entrepreneurs of the digital economy may be just taking advantage of these realities. Some may be artists in their own right, who should have been rightfully compensated but their being exploited by the website owners, they appear to be the current day victims of exploited labour compared to the writing of previous authors including Karl Marx. Terranova therefore saw contradictions on free labour not as an alternative to capitalism as such but as new forms of labour that might have evolved in relation to the expansion of the cultural industries and are part of a process of economic experimentation with the creation of monetary value out of knowledge/culture/ affect (Terranova, 2004) (Paraphrasing made). As to the meaning of ‘biological turn’ in her chapter of Self Control, we need realized Terranova’s networks can be thought of in terms of “abstract machines of soft control –a diagram of power that takes as its operational field the productive capacities of the hyperconnected many” (Terranova, 2004). The ‘biological turn’ here is the act of computing that leads to a view of social phenomena as the outcome of a multitude of molecular, semi-ordered interactions between large populations of elements. To illustrate, individual users become part of a vast network culture with the systems only allowing for soft control (as compared with cellular automata models as part of his other research). Terranova (2004) thus explained that the open network (such as the Internet or network of networks) “is a global and large realization of the liquid state that pushes to the limits the capacity of control of mechanisms effectively to mould the rules and select the aims” (118). Put Terranova (2004: 121) in her exact works would make it clearer: The biological turn is, as we have seen, not only a new approach to computation, but it also aspires to offer a social technology of control able to explain and replicate not only the collective behaviour of distributed networks such as the internet, but also the complex and unpredictable patterns of contemporary informational capitalism. … The biological turn thus seems to extend from computing itself towards a more general conceptual approach to understanding the dynamic behaviour of the internet, network culture, milieus of innovation and contemporary ‘deregulated markets’ –that is of all social, technical and economic structures that are characterized by a distributed and dynamic interaction of large numbers of entities with no central controller in charge. When applied to many social phenomena, in terms of market behaviour, Terranova appears to have found the advantages and disadvantages in this situation. She saw the downside part of self control, where multitude/mass cannot be made to unite under any common cause because the space of a network culture is that of a permanent battlefield where the advantages are clear in terms of opportunities for self-organization and experimentation based on horizontal and diffuse communication. She did saw that the simultaneous tendencies of people to diverge and separate, and converge and join, on the other, shown by networked movements might allow the birth of common grounds and understanding as what Terranova when she said “a common passion giving rise to a distributed movement able to displace the limits and terms within which the political constitution of the future is played out” (2004, p. 156) (Escobar, n.d.) (Paraphrasing made) Q3. Both Rajan and Terranova are concerned with society being subjected to a biological strategy. How do they see the relationship between this strategy and work and profit? How do their books reinforce each other and help us to understand this moment in capitalism? How if at all, do they differ in their analysis on this moment? Rajan and Terranova’s concern’s with society being subjected to a biological strategy seems to admit of the role of actors in industry to ensure each companies strategy for work in profit. Since Rajan saw that capitalism is not an eternal and essential systemic construct, but is rather completely historically specific and mutable it would imply that for there is room for strategy making since decision of entities could help change the rules of the market. In business terms, corporation could be successful with their plans in relation to what the environment is saying. This further supported by his further finding that neither the life sciences nor market systems completely determined the other, though the relationships between the two were tangible, significant and required resolution. Terranova saw exploitation even in the digital economy where the work of other is being used by others who know how to take advantage the present level of technology. Being a digital economy does not eliminated the exploited therefore and those that can take advantage are the real owners As to how do their books reinforce each other and help us to understand this moment in capitalism, it can be said that for both works admits of the relevance and significance of corporations having strategy in their management which could help chart their destinies. As to how if at all, do they differ in their analysis on this moment, Rajan proceeded from the sequence of events in the life of organizations, while Terranova, took off from the social point of view where she saw business strategy in the context of capitalism or social forces. Conclusion: We have seen how the works and Rajan and Terranova converging at common business realities although they proceeded with their analysis of the business strategies from different point of view. For Rajan, he found relationship of events in the light of his research of genome which could be in a sense considered internal approach while that of Terrranova, it could be said that her approach was from external point view with the her recognition of exploitation of labour under the digital economy. It is not then impossible to appreciate that different approaches could produce the same results. References: Arturo Escobar, A. (n.d.) Places and Regions in the Age of Globality: Social Movements and Biodiversity Conservation in the Colombian Pacific Department of Anthropology University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Rajan (2005) Background and research interests {www document}URL http://www.lawandsocietysummerinstitutes.org/workshop05/paper19/Kaushik.DO C., Accessed January 8,2006 Terranova, Tiziana. 2004. Network Culture. London: Pluto Press. Read More