[Hum_Calendar_Events] [CISA Event] TODAY! - "The Experimental Machinery of Global Clinical Trials"

[CDH Help Desk]

UCLA Center for India and South Asia

 

invites you to 

 


"The Experimental Machinery of Global Clinical Trials:


 Case Studies from India, and some Structural Speculations"


Lecture by Kaushik Sunder Rajan, UC-Irvine


Monday, May 07, 2007
12:00 PM - 2:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095



The global outsourcing of randomized clinical trials for drug
development has increased dramatically over the past decade. In the last
two years, India has emerged as potentially one of the most attractive
destinations for these trials. In this paper, Kaushik Sunder Rajan
traces this dynamic at three scales:

i. The global political economy of drug development (driven by forms of
biocapital) that structures these movements;
ii. The clinical trials landscape in India, especially in terms of the
massive capacity building currently underway to attract these trials;
and
iii. The local contexts and histories within which the conduct of these
trials in particular places must be understood.

In the process, the speaker wishes to think through how global political
economies and local historical contexts interact; but also wish to
consider how biocapital articulates with other systems and regimes of
capital at multiple scales.

Kaushik Sunder Rajan is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at
UC-Irvine. He was initially trained as a biologist, obtained his Ph.D.
in the History and Social Studies of Science and Technology, and works
on the anthropology of science and technology. His recent book titled
Biocapital: The Constitution of Post-Genomic Life (2006) is a
multi-sited ethnography of emergent genomic research and drug
development marketplaces in the United States and India. On the other
hand, it traces the historical emergence of what he calls 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. In the former register, Sunder Rajan's 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). 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. 

                                                              

UCLA Center for India and South Asia

11387 Bunche hall

Box 148703

Los Angeles, California 90095-1487

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/hum_events/attachments/20070507/7982367a/attachment.html