[Sci-tech-public] Anthropology Colloquium 9/29/08 - "Extracting Blood: Relational Technologies in Papua New Guinea Biomedicine"

[Amberly Steward]

The MIT Anthropology Department presents

 

"Extracting Blood: 

Relational Technologies in 

Papua New Guinea Biomedicine"

 

Alice Street, Cambridge University

 

Monday, September 29 @ 12:30pm

MIT Building 16, Room 220

 

A study of how biomedical technology enables hospitals to harness patients
relational technologies of gift exchange to feed the institutions blood
economy. In contrast to blood donation, attention is drawn to different
regimes of extraction.

 

 

Anthropologists studying voluntary-anonymous systems of blood donation have
noted the ways in which they facilitate imaginings of national relatedness
and integration.  This paper focuses on family replacement systems in Papua
New Guinea, where blood donated by a patient's relative replaces the units
taken from the bank, in order to examine what kinds of relational imaginings
are possible when blood is exchanged between people who know one another.
Patients in Madang Hospital are led to believe that it is their
responsibility to obtain blood donations from their relatives within a
kinship obligation system.  However, articulations of kinship exchange with
a biomedical blood economy are not as straightforward as hospital workers
suggest. Instead the hospital emerges as a crucial, but hidden, mediator in
these transactions.  Doctors conceal from patients the fact that blood group
incompatibilities mean blood intended for a specific person may be
redirected elsewhere.  This 'biomedical technology' enables the hospital to
harness patients' 'relational technologies' of gift exchange to feed the
institution's blood economy. In contrast to anthropologists' common focus on
blood donation, here attention is drawn to the role of recipients in
negotiating different regimes of extraction.

 

 

 

Lunch will be provided. 

Please RSVP to asteward at mit.edu by Thursday, September 25th.

 

 

Amberly Steward
Senior Administrative Assistant
Anthropology Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Bldg. 16-267
Cambridge, MA 02139
p) 617.253.3065
f) 617.253.5363 

 

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