Virtual Library

We apply the concept of “biopolitical citizenship” to show how and with what consequences biology and medicine are mobilized as political techniques in the legal immigration procedures of permanent residency acquisition and family reunification. Medical examinations and DNA testing are employed by the U.S. state as objective sorting criteria in the immigration legal process. Based on qualitative examination of immigrants' and their attorneys' participation in the legalization process, we demonstrate how these biological screening mechanisms create added uncertainty and problems that disproportionately affect particular people. In this context, aspiring citizens undergo biological evaluations that appear transparent, objective, and democratic. However, because of how evaluations are structured, they actually lower the chances of certain individuals to succeed in their citizenship endeavors.

Growing recognitio+G61n of bioethics' shortcomings, associated in large part with its heavy reliance on abstract principles, or so-called principlism, has led many scholars to propose that the field should be reformed or reconceptualised. Principlism is seen to de-contextualise the process of ethical decision-making, thus restricting bioethics' contributions to debate and policy on new and emergent biotechnologies. This article examines some major critiques of bioethics and argues for an alternative normative approach; namely, a sociology of bio-knowledge focussing on human rights. The article discusses the need for such an approach, including the challenges posed by the recent rise of ‘the bio-economy’. It explores some potential alternative bases for a normative sociology of bio-knowledge, before presenting the elements of the proposed human rights-focused approach. This approach, it is argued, will benefit from the insights and concepts offered by various fields of critical scholarship, particularly the emergent sociology of human rights, science and technology studies, Foucaultian scholarship, and feminist bioethics.

While the eradication of smallpox has long been documented, not many know the Chinese roots of this historic achievement. In this revelatory study, Mary Augusta Brazelton examines the PRC's public health campaigns of the 1950s to explain just how China managed to inoculate almost six hundred million people against this and other deadly diseases.

Mass Vaccination tells the story of the people, materials, and systems that built these campaigns, exposing how, by improving the nation's health, the Chinese Communist Party quickly asserted itself in the daily lives of all citizens. This crusade had deep roots in the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, when researchers in China's southwest struggled to immunize as many people as possible, both in urban and rural areas. But its legacy was profound, providing a means for the state to develop new forms of control and of engagement. Brazelton considers the implications of vaccination policies for national governance, from rural health care to Cold War-era programs of medical diplomacy. By embedding Chinese medical history within international currents, she highlights how and why China became an exemplar of primary health care at a crucial moment in global health policy.