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Article ID: CBB637966434

Indigenous Body Parts, Mutating Temporalities, and the Half-Lives of Postcolonial Technoscience (August 2013)

Kowal, Emma (Author)
Radin, Joanna M. (Author)
Reardon, Jenny (Author)

Social Studies of Science
Volume: 43
Issue: 4
Pages: 465-483
Publication date: August 2013
Language: English

DOI: 10.1177/0306312713490843

URI: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312713490843

Publication Date: August 2013
Edition Details: Special Issue: Indigenous Body Parts and Postcolonial Technoscience

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Technoscience DNA; RNA Postcolonialism Temporality Cryogenics; cryonics Genomics Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Science and technology studies (STS)

Biological samples collected from indigenous communities from the mid-20th century for scientific study and preserved in freezers of the Global North have been at the center of a number of controversies. This essay explores why the problem of indigenous biospecimens has returned to critical attention frequently over the past two decades, and why and how Science and Technology Studies should attend to this problem. We propose that mutation – the variously advantageous, deleterious, or neutral mechanism of biological change – can provide a conceptual and analogical resource for reckoning with unexpected problems created by the persistence of frozen indigenous biospecimens. Mutations transcend dichotomies of premodern/modern, pro-science/anti-science, and north/south, inviting us to focus on entanglements and interdependencies. Freezing biospecimens induces mutations in indigenous populations, in the scientists who collected and stored such specimens, and in the specimens themselves. The jumbling of timescales introduced by practices of freezing generates new ethical problems: problems that become ever more acute as the supposed immortality of frozen samples meets the mortality of the scientists who maintain them. More broadly, we propose that an ‘abductive’ approach to Science and Technology Studies theories of co-production can direct attention to the work of temporality in the ongoing alignment of social and technical orders. Attending to the unfolding and mutating vital legacies of indigenous body parts, collected in one time and place and reused in others, reveals the enduring colonial dimensions of scientific practice in our global age and demonstrates new openings for ethical action. Finally, we outline the articles in this special issue and their respective ‘mutations’ to postcolonial Science and Technology Studies, a field that, like genome science, is racked with ethical and temporal dilemmas of reckoning for the past in the present.

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Associated with

Article Kowal, Emma (August 2013) Orphan DNA: Indigenous samples, ethical biovalue and postcolonial science. Social Studies of Science (pp. 577-597). unapi

Article Joanna Radin (August 2013) Latent life: Concepts and practices of human tissue preservation in the International Biological Program. Social Studies of Science (pp. 484-508). unapi

Article Anderson, Warwick (August 2013) Objectivity and its discontents. Social Studies of Science (pp. 557-576). unapi

Article TallBear, Kim (August 2013) Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Social Studies of Science (pp. 509-533). unapi

Article Hoeyer, Klaus L.; Jensen, Anja M. B. (August 2013) Transgressive ethics: Professional work ethics as a perspective on ‘aggressive organ harvesting’. Social Studies of Science (pp. 598-618). unapi

Article Kent, Michael (August 2013) The importance of being Uros: Indigenous identity politics in the genomic age. Social Studies of Science (pp. 534-556). unapi

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