Jacob Copeman - South Asian Tissue Economies

Questions of the social implications of biotechnology and biological exchange (the extraction of human tissues such as blood, skin and organs for testing, storage and/or distribution for therapeutic or research purposes) have recently been brought strongly to the analytical fore across the social sciences. This book focuses on the variegated biopolitical milieus of this kind of exchange specifically in South Asia. It ranges widely theoretically, thematically, and regionally in examining South Asian variants of and engagements with diverse modes of biological exchange: caste, gender, and blood donation in Pakistan, DNA testing amongst a former Untouchable community in south India and amongst diasporic Indians in Houston, Texas, body (cadaveric) donation in India, the use of fake blood in Bangladeshi cinema, the mobilisation of blood, hearts, and ketones to protest the Indian governments failure to provide redress or care to victims of the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster, and blood-based political portraits and petitions in south India. In considering these complex issues, this book extends the parameters of classic accounts of the role of substance transactions in the production of South Asian personhood into investigations of the biopolitics and economies of substance that shape people and communities in diverse parts of the subcontinent, describing findings that illuminate how local responses to the implementation of various kinds of tissue economy both reflect and also transform socio-cultural values in South Asia.

This book was published as a special issue of Contemporary South Asia .

Jacob Copeman is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Veins of Devotion: Blood Donation and Religious Experience in North India (2009). His edited and co-edited works include Blood Donation, Bioeconomy, Culture (2009), The Guru in South Asia: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2012), and Social Theory After Strathern (2014).

Edited by
Jacob Copeman

First published 2014

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ISBN 13: 978-0-415-74239-9

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The chapters in this book were originally published in Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013). When citing this material, please use the original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Introduction: South Asian tissue economies Jacob Copeman Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 195213

Blood splattered Bengal: The spectacular spurting blood of the Bangladeshi cinema Lotte Hoek Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 214229

Writing the disaster: substance activism after Bhopal Dwaipayan Banerjee Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 230242

Portraits of substance: image, text and intervention in Indias sanguinary politics Jacob Copeman Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 243259

Forbidden exchanges and gender: implications for blood donation during a maternal health emergency in Punjab, Pakistan Zubia Mumtaz and Adrienne Levay Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 260274

Citizens in the commons: blood and genetics in the making of the civic Deepa S. Reddy Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 275290

The substance that empowers? DNA in South Asia Yulia Egorova Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 291303

Interweaving fragments of ethical publicity and ethical resistance: the quest for cadaver organs in India Karen De Looze Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 304317

Afterword: Given over to demand: excorporation as commitment Lawrence Cohen Contemporary South Asia , volume 21, issue 3 (September 2013) pp. 318332

Please direct any queries you may have about the citations to clsuk.permissions@cengage.com

South Asian tissue economies

Jacob Copeman
Social Anthropology, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh, UK

This introduction surveys existing literature on South Asian tissue economies and reflects on engagements with diverse modes of biological exchange in the subcontinent. It elaborates the aims and themes of this special issue, which presents essays on caste, gender, and blood donation in Pakistan (Mumtaz and Levay), DNA testing amongst a former Untouchable community in south India (Egorova) and amongst diasporic Indians in Houston, Texas (Reddy), body (cadaveric) donation in India (De Looze), the use of fake blood in Bangladeshi cinema (Hoek), the mobilisation of blood, hearts, and ketones to protest the Indian governments failure to provide redress or care to victims of the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster (Banerjee), and blood-based political portraits in south India (Copeman). Extending the parameters of classic accounts of the role of substance transactions in the production of South Asian personhood into investigations of contemporary tissue economies, it examines the foundational work of Lawrence Cohen in this area and proposes a set of relations between the double-ness of substance (its promise, as a locus of hope, emerging precisely from its capacity to debase) and its productivity within discourses of civil society and modernisation.