Paper short abstract:

Biocapital ignores processes of biofinacialization that produce speculative, biofinancialized human capital markets. These biofinancial markets trade in new forms of relative surplus value forms such as surplus risk, taken to be a form a debt.

Paper long abstract:

Biocapital impacts global development projects and economies across all societies. However, existing analyses limit our understanding of this impact by focusing on the cultural logics of industrial production, while disregarding financial circulation. This ignores processes of biofinacialization that produce speculative human capital markets. Human capital is the cornerstone of all neoliberal societies. However, the role that pharmaceutical technologies increasingly play in the risk hedging strategies of human capital hedge funds—our (risk-bearing) human capital selves—remains undertheorized. I ethnographically explore the financialized debt relations produced through calculations of abstract biomedical risk by black gay African men in the context of a the global HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) clinical trial. Biofinance is when individuals use pharmaceuticals as if they are derivative contracts; it occurs when individuals and/or populations treat (or hedge) risks rather than actual disease. This creates surplus health since they are not sick. As bearers of industrial biocaptial, individuals claim rights to health and conceive of having property in themselves and ownership over their bodies. Alternatively, as bearers of biofinancialized human capital these claims are transformed. When hedging biomedical risks, this creates surplus health for those that can access pharmaceutical derivatives and surplus risk for those who cannot. Thus, surplus risk is a form of relative debt owed to those who are too poor to access drugs that produce surplus health. This is especially the case when those who inhabit contexts of surplus risk are increasingly exploited research subjects of global clinical trials, which drive biofinancial cultures globally.