Paper short abstract:

In this presentation I argue that the biosociotechnical perspective can be useful to understand the change of bodies and properties status not only at the conceptual, theoretical or epistemological level but to the ontological and political in the context of reproductive biocapitalism

Paper long abstract:

STS field coined the concept of biocapitalism to explain how biological material has been subsumed in capitalist dynamics to be turn into products to be sold in the biotechnological industry (Rajan 2006; Helmreich 2008). In this context human bodies have become a space for capitalist accumulation. Such is the case of reproductive biocapitalism where biological human female bodies take part providing gametes, embryos and pregnancy to be commodified in this biotechnological capitalism (Cooper & Waldby 2014).

This phenomena has brought about not only a market nonexistent before but the construction of new relationships with the body. One of these is such where it would be possible to allow the disposal of the own body to drive it to its commoditization. This relationship is a new historical one compared to the one which capitalism established in their early days, where bodies couldn’t be considered properties given they were conceived as part of subjects out of the realm of objects and object relationships (Hoeyer 2013; Waldby & Cooper 2008).

I argue that the biosociotechnical can be useful to understand the change of bodies and properties status not only at the epistemological level but to the ontological and political too. The emergence of this new body relationship has been possible due to the articulation of biological knowledges about reproduction, social and political contexts making human reproduction a matter of concern but also a profit-driven space, and technological capacities that enable intervening the body and separating its parts along the mobilization of sociotechnical imaginaries.