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- Convenors:
-
Casimir MacGregor
(BRANZ Victoria University of Wellington)
Sverre Molland (Australian National University)
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- Stream:
- Immoralities
- Location:
- Old Arts-155 (Theatre D)
- Start time:
- 3 December, 2015 at
Time zone: Australia/Melbourne
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Contemporary mobilities of organs, stem cells treatments and humans have become potent symbols of exploitation of the living body. This panel explores how different modes of life are legitimated and the way responses to contemporary mobilities challenge current conceptualisations of human rights.
Long Abstract:
Increasing human mobilities, such as human trafficking, organ trafficking and stem cell tourism, highlight how human rights paradoxically becomes a moral horizon annulled through its mobilisation. Contemporary mobilities of organs, stem cells treatments and humans have become potent symbols of the global manifestation of exploitation. Programmes that address such human rights violations, such as anti-trafficking programmes, seem a promising response to the ways in which contemporary global capitalism structures labour, markets and supply chains. However, these discourses often reflect a fixation with the living body as opposed to canvassing a critique of labour relations. Thus, responses to contemporary mobilities challenge current conceptualisations of human rights. Rather than representing an emancipatory politics they become an expression of what Didier Fassin (2009) has termed bio-legitimacy - how different modes of life are mobilised and legitimated.
This panel explores the politics of life as manifested within mobilities and responses to these. It examines how the interaction of these social forces change our conceptualisation of political being - especially the constitution of human rights. The panel seeks papers that examine the relation between bio-legitimacy and mobilities, especially with two core issues: (1) the displacement of the site of where power seizes life- life is not merely threatened by disease, but life is also cultivated through science and commercial projects. (2) the shift and transformation of the modality of power- power that is not only the enforcement of law, but the adoption of the norm and the management and control of life.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sverre Molland (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper considers biolegitimacy as a heuristic device in order to analyse how biology and bodies mobilise specific moral entrepreneurship within anti-trafficking programmes.
Paper long abstract:
Human trafficking has become a key site for intervention in global politics. Although anti-trafficking has considerable ability to mobilize resources for the combat against structural inequality within labour relations, anti-trafficking is intertwined with a fixation with the 'trafficking survivor' resulting in notable individuated policy responses. This paper considers biolegitimacy as a heuristic device in order to come to terms with how anti-trafficking structures debates relating to human rights and politics of migrant labour. Trafficked victims framed as a concern with biology and the body will be discussed with reference to specific anti-trafficking initiatives and the moral-legal arguments that eventuate from them.
Michaela Stockey-Bridge (University of Technology Sydney)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the politics of mobility and life in transnational commercial surrogacy arrangements between Australia and India.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the politics of mobility and life in transnational commercial surrogacy. Women's fecund bodies in the global south are increasingly becoming sites of testing, ova procurement, and surrogacy. Increased global mobility has meant greater reproductive stratification and shifting conceptualizations of the reproductive body, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in consumer choice for the wealthy and an expansion of bodily labour for the poor. The mobile and wealthy now have the choice to travel to low income countries and consume health care that locals are financially unable to access, further stratifying health care provision. Borderless health care is evidence of a trend in which health care is being transformed into a commodity and human rights issue. The global disparity in wealth distribution skews mobility, wealth and health to the privileged global north, while poverty is the underlying commonality of poor health and disease in the global south. This contrast is clear in the descriptions of intended parents and surrogate experiences this paper presents. Australian intended parents wait 'at home' for news of their gestating baby, they are able to get on with their everyday lives. Indian surrogates are physically immersed in the gestational period, carry the pregnancy, endure the frequent testing and surrender their bodies to the surrogacy arrangement. This paper argues that the mobility of the wealthy as relative to the immobility of the poor in the global reproductive market should be understood in terms of the 'Bioavailability' of life.
Jane Brophy (Monash University)
Paper short abstract:
The market for unproven stem cell treatments in China represents a space governed by neoliberal conceptions of market forces and the ‘right to try’. This paper utilises the concept of ‘clinical labour’ to problematise regulatory approaches that addresses moral concerns rather than power imbalances.
Paper long abstract:
Stem cell tourism has been a site of fierce ethical and moral debate. In China and internationally, supporters of commercial, unproven stem cell treatments (SCTs) point to the promissory nature of the treatments and a patient's 'right to try'. Criticisms of the 'failure' of legal regulatory frameworks in China seem to be underpinned by traditional notions of power structures corresponding to liberal nation states. Ong's (2006) 'neoliberalism as exception' problematises notions of power and sovereignty in Asia, and outlines how China's loosening of sovereignty in some areas has been deployed to aid economic development through international partnerships and investment. Within China the market for unproven SCTs has been developed by local and foreign clinicians, scientists, patients and businesspeople to take advantage of this space of 'exception'.
However, while the market for unproven SCTs in China tends to be framed by patients and providers in neoliberal terms (providing choice and circumventing bureaucracy), the lack of regulation also represents Ong's 'exceptions to neoliberalism', as protections from exploitation are also removed. Based on ethnographic research undertaken in China, this paper explores whether the removal of such protections in the context of a commercial market for SCTs is a form of clinical labour (Waldby & Cooper 2008), whereby people undergoing treatments become a generative site for bioknowledge and biocapital. The disarticulation of power and biolegitimacy in the commercial market for SCTs may create difficulties for regulatory approaches with a strong emphasis on ethical oversight rather than underlying power structures.
Casimir MacGregor (BRANZ Victoria University of Wellington) Alan Petersen Megan Munsie (The University of Melbourne )
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines stem cell tourism as a human rights issue. It critiques the notion of bio-legitimacy, by suggesting that the focus of biopolitical phenomena should not solely be on humanitarianism, but concerned with the right to life.
Paper long abstract:
Recently there has been a growing interest in stem cell 'tourism' - where a person (or carer) travels to another country for purported stem cell treatments not available in their home country. Patients have advocated for access to clinically unproven treatments (such as stem cell treatments) through the discourse of human rights. The patients 'right to try' movement in the USA has mobilised the discourse of human rights in order to assert the moral right to determine a legal right to try and gain access to clinically unproven treatments outside of clinical trial without travelling overseas. A human rights approach to health ascribes each human life equal worth, notwithstanding the fact that, in reality, the biological lives of humans are recurrently subject to judgements of worth.
This paper critiques Fassin's (2009) notion of bio-legitimacy - how different modes of life are valued, mobilised and legitimated. Bio-legitimacy asserts that biopolitical phenomena always has a moral dimension. We suggest, based upon our examination of stem cell tourism, there must be a dialectic between moral and legal rights. Second, for bio-legitimacy, humanitarianism as a moral principle grants human life absolute priority. Our paper suggests that it is not solely the logic of humanitarianism that gives life priority, but rather the right to life. We argue, in order to legitimate life, we must attend to the re-formulation of 'biological citizenship' between citizen and state that mobilities like stem cell tourism creates, but also the creation and bearing of rights - the right to life.