Collaborators Collaborating

As bio-capital in the form of medical knowledge, skills and investments moves with greater frequency from its origin in First World industrialized settings to resource-poor communities with weak or little infrastructure, countries with emerging economies are starting to expand new indigenous science bases of their own. The case studies here, from the UK, West Africa, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Latin America and elsewhere, explore the forms of collaborative knowledge relations in play and the effects of ethics review and legal systems on local communities, and also demonstrate how anthropologically-informed insights may hope to influence key policy debates. Questions of governance in science and technology, as well as ethical issues related to bio-innovation, are increasingly being featured as topics of complex resourcing and international debate, and this volume is a much-needed resource for interdisciplinary practitioners and specialists in medical anthropology, social theory, corporate ethics, science and technology studies.

Monica Konradis a medical anthropologist and former Bye-Fellow / Senior Research Associate of Girton College, University of Cambridge. Her research interests in contemporary ethical and organizational forms range across the arts, architecture and life sciences. She has conducted fieldwork amongst various therapeutic and research communities in relation to personalized healthcare and procreative practices (UK) and essential medicines and global health (Cambodia, Thailand, Europe). Her publications includeNameless Relations(2005) andNarrating the New Predictive Genetics(2005).

Preface

PART I: INTERSECTIONS AND ALIGNMENTS

Chapter 1. A Feel for Detail: New Directions in Collaborative Anthropology
Monica Konrad

Chapter 2. An Amazon Plant in Clinical Trial: Intersections of Knowledge and Practice
Françoise Barbira-Freedman

PART II: TRANSACTIONS AND BENEFITS

Chapter 3. Substantial Transactions and an Ethics of Kinship in Recent Collaborative Malaria Vaccine Trials in The Gambia
Paul Wenzel Geissler, Ann Kelly, Babatunde Imoukhuede& Robert Pool

Chapter 4. Transacting Knowledge, Transplanting Organs: Collaborative Scientific Partnerships in Mongolia
Rebecca Empson

PART III: CURRENCIES AND IMPERATIVES

Chapter 5. Currencies of Collaboration
Marilyn Strathern

Chapter 6. Collaborative Imperatives: A Manifesto, of Sorts, for the Reimagination of the Classic Scene of Fieldwork Encounter
Douglas Holmes& George E. Marcus

PART IV: RESEARCH AND ETHICS

Chapter 7. Building Capacity: A Sri Lankan Perspective on Research, Ethics and Accountability
Robert Simpson

Chapter 8.  Global Clinical Trials and the Contextualization of Research
Ann Kelly

PART V: ALLIANCES AND DIVERSITY

Chapter 9. The Performance of Global Health R&D Alliances and Interdisciplinary Research Approaches
Sonja Marjanovic

Chapter 10. Partial Lineages in Diversity Research
Amade M.Charek

PART VI: EXPERTISES AND ATTRIBUTIONS

Chapter 11. Meeting Minds; Encountering Worlds: Sciences and Other Expertises on the North Slope of Alaska
Barbara Bodenhorn

Chapter 12. Recognizing Scholarly Subjects in the Politics of Nature: Problematizing Collaboration in Southeast Asian Area Studies
Celia Lowe

Afterword:Enabling Environments? Polyphony in 53
Monica Konrad

Notes on Contributors
Index