Our project is organizing an open symposium at the next 4S Conference, in Toronto (Oct 7 – 10). Please consider submitting your abstract! Info below:
Panel #106: Human Genomics in the Global Economy
Co-organisers: Tayyaba Jiwani (University of Exeter), Matthew Tontonoz (Arizona State University), Celso Neto (University of Exeter), Stuart Hogarth (University of Cambridge)
This panel situates the explosion of human genomic biotechnologies over the past two decades within broader transformations in the global neoliberal economy. Despite the centrality of biotech innovation to neoliberalism (Cooper 2008), detailed analyses of the political economy of genomic research and innovation remain relatively scarce, especially in the Global South.
Initial scholarship has theorised the circulation of biological materials through ‘tissue economies’, and the creation of new forms of ‘biocapital’ through notions of intellectual property linked to speculative finance, venture capital and processes of ‘assetization’ and rentier capitalism (Waldby and Mitchell 2006; Sunder Rajan 2006; Birch 2016; Christophers 2020; Rikap 2024; Baines and Hager, 2025). It has also highlighted the gendered and racialised relations of production and exchange established on this terrain through legacies of colonial and capitalist science.
However, the rapid pace of technological change has meant genomics is reshaping entire industries (e.g. healthcare, pharmaceuticals, reproduction, surveillance, forensics, or security) and demands renewed theoretical and empirical attention. This panel will curate new approaches to studying the political economy of human genomics and biotech research and innovation in contemporary capitalism.
We welcome contributions, both empirical and conceptual, that engage with questions of:
– Privatisation, speculation, and financialisation in genomics innovation, and its diverse actors (e.g. venture capital, academia or philanthropy)
– Redefining notions of value, labour, and capital in genomic data, materials, and technologies
– Inequality and exploitation, structured through the axes of race, gender, and class in genomics research and innovation
– North-South hierarchies in knowledge production and economic flows
– The dynamics of genomics and biotechnologies in postcolonial contexts, particularly the role of the nation-state and nationalist science
– New theorisations of the political economy of genomics under conditions of neoimperialism, techno-militarism, surveillance capitalism, and right-wing nativism
– Emancipatory, anticapitalist and decolonial approaches to genomics.
Submission deadline: April 30th, 2026
Submission instructions: https://www.4sonline.org/call_for_submissions_toronto.php