Asian Biotech: Ethics and Communities of Fate

Thursday, February 3, 2011
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
(Pacific)
Philippines Conference Room
Speaker: 
  • Aihwa Ong

Asian Biotech:  Ethics and Communities of Fate is the title of a new book that Prof. Ong has co-edited with Nancy N. Chen.  It offers the first overview of Asia’s emerging initiatives in the biosciences.  Its case studies include blood collection in Singapore and China; stem-cell research in Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan; genetically modified foods in China; and clinical trials in India.  Such projects vary by country, as do the policies that are associated with them.  Discernible nevertheless is a significant trend toward state entrepreneurialism in Asian biotechnology.  Prof. Ong will also explore how political thinking and ethical reasoning are converging around the biosciences in Asia.  Copies of Asian Biotech will be available for signing and purchase at the talk.

Aihwa Ong studies how the interactions of capitalism, technology, politics, and ethics crystallize global situations, frame spaces of problematization, and generate situated solutions.  With these matters in mind, she has done field research in Southeast Asia, Southern China, and California.  A forthcoming volume is Worlding Cities:  Asian Experiments and the Art of Being Global.  Prior publications include Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (2nd ed., 2010); Privatizing China:  Socialism from Afar (co-edited, 2008); Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (co-edited, 2005); Flexible Citizenship:  The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (1999); Neoliberalism as Exception:  Mutations in Citizenshipand Sovereignty (2006); and Buddha is Hiding:  Refugees, Citizenship, the New America (2003).  Prof. Ong has received many awards and has lectured at universities around the world.  She chairs of the US National Committee for the Pacific Science Association.  Her 1982 PhD is from Columbia University.