Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life tells the story of how a singular economy began as a fantasy, and how that fantasy was manifested into reality. Born with Keynesian macroeconomics, the fantasy of “the economy” was sharpened during the early Cold War period into an instrument of death-dealing. This occurred primarily though the development of a new concept in macroeconomics …
The Economization of Life (EoL) is a book that sticks. Author Michelle Murphy delicately surfaces the history and persistence of racist and eugenicist logics as they comprise global economies and state governance practices, and, in a bold and self-reflexive gesture, describes how these same logics operate in feminist organizations and academic research. Murphy’s work forced me to grapple with unresolvable …
The Economization of Life (EoL) begins with its cover – a series of Drosophilain jars. Drosophila melanogaster – the common fruit fly – may be the model organism par excellence. Seeing the book cover, I was transported back to my graduate school days and the sweet smell of the yeasty food that filled the fly room. During one of …
As I was thinking about the task of reviewing the anthropological, bioethical, and/or STS implications of the past month of news, my mind kept returning to the introduction of Laura Briggs’ recent book How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump. In Briggs’ introduction, she finds “reproductive labor” is necessary to both biological reproduction …
This month, and especially this past week, has seen immense media coverage of abortion access, both in the United States and abroad. A recent study out of UCSF has shown that abortion is extremely safe, with lower post-procedure ER visits than many other routine surgical procedures. However, despite the safety of this medical procedure, abortion is still highly …
Science, Medicine, and Anthropology