Article ID: CBB568362575

On the Suspended Sentences of the Scott Sisters: Mass Incarceration, Kidney Donation, and the Biopolitics of Race in the United States (March 2015)

unapi

Pollock, Arne (Author)


Science, Technology and Human Values
Volume: 40
Issue: 2
Pages: 250-271


Publication Date: March 2015
Edition Details: Special Issue: Ethics, Organizations, and Science
Language: English

In December 2010, the governor of Mississippi suspended the dual life sentences of two African American sisters who had been imprisoned for sixteen years on an extraordinary condition: that Gladys Scott donate a kidney to her ailing sister Jamie Scott. The Scott Sisters’ case is a highly unusual one, yet it is a revealing site for inquiry into US biopolitics more broadly. Close attention to the conditional release and its context demands a broader frame than traditional bioethics and helps to push science and technology studies (STS) analysis of race past its conventional focus on genetics. This article draws on the Scott Sisters’ case as a site for interrogating the US context of racialized mass incarceration and kin-oriented and consumerist valorization of organ donation. Tensions between racialized exclusions, the promise of consumerist freedom, and the lack of expectations of the state are foundational to a distinctly American biological citizenship. By putting the Scott Sisters’ case into conversation with broader arguments about incarceration as a site of racialization and STS literatures of organ transplantation and of biological citizenship in diverse geographical sites, this article seeks to articulate some of the racialized contours of biopolitics in the United States.

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Article Jennifer L. Croissant (March 2015) Routine, Scale, and Inequality: Introduction to the Special Issue on Ethics, Organizations, and Science. Science, Technology and Human Values (pp. 167-175). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB568362575/

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Authors & Contributors
Hoeyer, Klaus
deVries, Karen
Cech, Erin A.
Crooks, Roderic N.
Hauskeller, Christine
Pesch, Udo
Concepts
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Ethics
Medicine
Justice
Equality
Power (social sciences)
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Places
United States
East Asia
European Union
Denmark
China
Asia
Institutions
United States. Department of Defense
United States. Central Intelligence Agency
National Cancer Institute (U.S.)
American Psychological Association
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