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Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life
In Fungible Life Aihwa Ong explores the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research, offering critical insights into the complex ways Asian bioscientific worlds and cosmopolitan sciences are entangled in a tropical environment brimming with the threat of emergent diseases. At biomedical centers in Singapore and China scientists map genetic variants, disease risks, and biomarkers, mobilizing ethnicized "Asian" bodies and health data for genomic research. Their differentiation between Chinese, Indian, and Malay DNA makes fungible Singapore's ethnic-stratified databases that come to "represent" majority populations in Asia. By deploying genomic science as a public good, researchers reconfigure the relationships between objects, peoples, and spaces, thus rendering "Asia" itself as a shifting entity. In Ong's analysis, Asia emerges as a richly layered mode of entanglements, where the population's genetic pasts, anxieties and hopes, shared genetic weaknesses, and embattled genetic futures intersect. Furthermore, her illustration of the contrasting methods and goals of the Biopolis biomedical center in Singapore and BGI Genomics in China raises questions about the future direction of cosmopolitan science in Asia and beyond.
312 pages, Hardcover
Published October 28, 2016
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About the author
Aihwa Ong
20 books30 followersAihwa Ong is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty and Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 11, 2017
Aihwa Ong’s Fungible Life is an ambitious project tracing recent developments in biomedical infrastructure and research in Asia. The book is the product of nearly a decade observing and studying the work of scientists at Biopolis, a biomedical research center in Singapore that was founded in 2003 and has since been making its bid to be one of the key players in the field of life sciences globally. Ong is an anthropologist, so her approach is to look at science as an institution with its own sets of cultural norms and values. Throughout the book, she examines the ways in which “cosmopolitan science” is a culture of its own whose research methods and findings have profound effects on socio-cultural projects like nation-building, determining racial/ethnic origins and boundaries, creating and sustaining ethical frameworks, and the formation of what Benedict Anderson calls “imagined communities.” The scope of the study is immense. Ong probes into a variety of herculean bioscientific projects including genomic sequencing, developing therapies for cancer, and responding to emerging infectious diseases in the Asian region. In so doing, she frames larger questions about human life, society, and our shared global future(s).
Among Ong’s central claims is that Singapore is poised to be an ideal breeding ground, so to speak, for advancements in the life sciences. First of all, there is broad state support for scientific research in Singapore through block grants and investment in infrastructure that allows for the growth and sustainability of Biopolis and other science centers on the island, including the Duke-NUS Medical School and the public clinics on Hospital Hill. Additionally, Singapore is something of a synecdoche for all of Asia given its unique population blend comprised of Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian citizens, in addition to European and American expats who come to Singapore to work in one of their burgeoning industries of business, finance, and science. Indeed, Ong mentions several times that Biopolis and other city-state initiatives in Singapore seem to be just as much about collecting talent (i.e., educated workers) as anything else. In chapter 8, about epidemics, Ong uses the metaphors of contagion and containment to discuss how Singapore seeks to be a “super spreader” of knowledge and American scientific “best practices” (191). Indeed, many Biopolis researchers were trained at institutions in the US and Europe, thus bringing with them the prestige and repute of the Western science community.
However, Ong also mentions several important cultural differences between Biopolis and American research centers; for example, Americans tend to prize individual genius while Asian science communities value collective effort. Science research in Singapore also tends to be less fraught with ideological debates. The scientists at Biopolis describe themselves as pursuing uncontroversial projects that respond to more immediate, “practical” needs rather than hand-wringing over ethical dilemmas or potential future consequences of something like embryonic stem cell research. They frame this as being to their advantage, though I have misgivings (and Ong seems to as well) about the sustainability of undertaking controversial scientific research that does not engage public debate about ethical issues or long-term ramifications. In the epilogue, Ong mentions that there has been no public discussion of “ethical questions about the biomedical initiative” in Singapore other than a play, “Facing Goya,” written by Ong Keng Sen. The play, Ong writes, “is a challenge to the Singaporean presumption that scientists are morally authorized to make decisions for the common good until proven wrong, thus obviating the need for an informed public discussion” (225–26). Though the favorable local political situation and the perceived role of Singaporean scientists as public servants create promising conditions for research that is responsible and responsive to regional needs, it may not ultimately be sustainable to leave it to scientists alone to be the arbiters of ethics.
In the final chapter, Ong offers a portrait of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in China. They have occupied massive former shoe factories in order to have the space and equipment to do genome sequencing at a large scale. Their occupation of these factories have invited comparisons of BGI and traditional manufacturing practices in China, a place known for cheap labor and its lack of industry regulation. Some science journalists have referred to BGI’s labs as “gene factories.” This invites broader questions about labor: can some science work be thought of as a type of “factory work”? (For more on this, see chapter 5, which includes a discussion of the “grunt work” done by grad students and lab workers in Singapore.) BGI and other related research centers in China depart from Biopolis’s expansive use of the ethnic heuristic to identify shared vulnerabilities across Asian nationalities in a kind of pan-Asian community-building project. Rather, BGI’s research re-instantiates hegemonic claims about the Han as the originary Chinese ethnic group from which all others sprung (thus rejecting accepted genographic research). As with Biopolis, the science works in the service of state goals, though in this case to different—and troubling—ends. This is just one example among many throughout the book when science reifies culture, including its racism and injustices.
Perhaps due to its sweeping scope and ambition, Fungible Life is difficult to wade through, especially in the prologue and introduction. The book is laden with jargon from both science and critical theory, so it may pose frustrations to the non-specialist reader. Even when I encountered theorists that were familiar to me (Foucault, Donna Haraway, Lauren Berlant), I found that Ong’s treatment of the theory was often confusing rather than clarifying. The book also suffered at times from not seeming particularly aware of itself; later chapters would introduce information as new even though it had been previously discussed at several junctures (e.g. “Alan Colman is a Scottish scientist who helped to clone Dolly the sheep”). This may allow for readers to approach single chapters in isolation without missing out on too much, so perhaps it is intentional.
Though I found the writing (and thus reading) somewhat belabored, I greatly enjoy having read the book because, in the final analysis, Ong offers a lot of worthwhile observations that I look forward to discussing. She shares my conviction that (the practice of) science is not as universal as we suspect, and that it takes particular shape based on circumstance. Her examination of the situatedness of science, and its specific expressions at Biopolis and BGI, offers rich soil for contemplation and discussion about what it means to be human.
Among Ong’s central claims is that Singapore is poised to be an ideal breeding ground, so to speak, for advancements in the life sciences. First of all, there is broad state support for scientific research in Singapore through block grants and investment in infrastructure that allows for the growth and sustainability of Biopolis and other science centers on the island, including the Duke-NUS Medical School and the public clinics on Hospital Hill. Additionally, Singapore is something of a synecdoche for all of Asia given its unique population blend comprised of Chinese, Malaysian, and Indian citizens, in addition to European and American expats who come to Singapore to work in one of their burgeoning industries of business, finance, and science. Indeed, Ong mentions several times that Biopolis and other city-state initiatives in Singapore seem to be just as much about collecting talent (i.e., educated workers) as anything else. In chapter 8, about epidemics, Ong uses the metaphors of contagion and containment to discuss how Singapore seeks to be a “super spreader” of knowledge and American scientific “best practices” (191). Indeed, many Biopolis researchers were trained at institutions in the US and Europe, thus bringing with them the prestige and repute of the Western science community.
However, Ong also mentions several important cultural differences between Biopolis and American research centers; for example, Americans tend to prize individual genius while Asian science communities value collective effort. Science research in Singapore also tends to be less fraught with ideological debates. The scientists at Biopolis describe themselves as pursuing uncontroversial projects that respond to more immediate, “practical” needs rather than hand-wringing over ethical dilemmas or potential future consequences of something like embryonic stem cell research. They frame this as being to their advantage, though I have misgivings (and Ong seems to as well) about the sustainability of undertaking controversial scientific research that does not engage public debate about ethical issues or long-term ramifications. In the epilogue, Ong mentions that there has been no public discussion of “ethical questions about the biomedical initiative” in Singapore other than a play, “Facing Goya,” written by Ong Keng Sen. The play, Ong writes, “is a challenge to the Singaporean presumption that scientists are morally authorized to make decisions for the common good until proven wrong, thus obviating the need for an informed public discussion” (225–26). Though the favorable local political situation and the perceived role of Singaporean scientists as public servants create promising conditions for research that is responsible and responsive to regional needs, it may not ultimately be sustainable to leave it to scientists alone to be the arbiters of ethics.
In the final chapter, Ong offers a portrait of the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) in China. They have occupied massive former shoe factories in order to have the space and equipment to do genome sequencing at a large scale. Their occupation of these factories have invited comparisons of BGI and traditional manufacturing practices in China, a place known for cheap labor and its lack of industry regulation. Some science journalists have referred to BGI’s labs as “gene factories.” This invites broader questions about labor: can some science work be thought of as a type of “factory work”? (For more on this, see chapter 5, which includes a discussion of the “grunt work” done by grad students and lab workers in Singapore.) BGI and other related research centers in China depart from Biopolis’s expansive use of the ethnic heuristic to identify shared vulnerabilities across Asian nationalities in a kind of pan-Asian community-building project. Rather, BGI’s research re-instantiates hegemonic claims about the Han as the originary Chinese ethnic group from which all others sprung (thus rejecting accepted genographic research). As with Biopolis, the science works in the service of state goals, though in this case to different—and troubling—ends. This is just one example among many throughout the book when science reifies culture, including its racism and injustices.
Perhaps due to its sweeping scope and ambition, Fungible Life is difficult to wade through, especially in the prologue and introduction. The book is laden with jargon from both science and critical theory, so it may pose frustrations to the non-specialist reader. Even when I encountered theorists that were familiar to me (Foucault, Donna Haraway, Lauren Berlant), I found that Ong’s treatment of the theory was often confusing rather than clarifying. The book also suffered at times from not seeming particularly aware of itself; later chapters would introduce information as new even though it had been previously discussed at several junctures (e.g. “Alan Colman is a Scottish scientist who helped to clone Dolly the sheep”). This may allow for readers to approach single chapters in isolation without missing out on too much, so perhaps it is intentional.
Though I found the writing (and thus reading) somewhat belabored, I greatly enjoy having read the book because, in the final analysis, Ong offers a lot of worthwhile observations that I look forward to discussing. She shares my conviction that (the practice of) science is not as universal as we suspect, and that it takes particular shape based on circumstance. Her examination of the situatedness of science, and its specific expressions at Biopolis and BGI, offers rich soil for contemplation and discussion about what it means to be human.
April 17, 2021
A little dry, but pretty thought-provoking.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews