The Political Economy of Hope and Authoritarian Liberalism in Genetic Research

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The Political Economy of Hope and Authoritarian Liberalism in Genetic

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VOLUME 12 NUMBER 1, 2013
The Political Economy of Hope and Authoritarian

Liberalism in Genetic Research
Mark Munsterhjelm
University of Windsor
In his influential and oft-cited book The Politics of Life Itself, the British
sociologist Nikolas Rose sets out a ‘cartography of the present’
focusing on what he terms advanced liberal democracies, in which the
defining feature of contemporary biopower is governance through
freedom within a political economy of hope. The semiotic square
provides a way to map Michel Foucault concepts of sovereignty
(make-die), biopolitics (make-live), necropolitics (not-make-live) and
law (not-make-die). This mapping shows that Rose’s political
economy of hope is focused strongly on biopolitical optimization and
legal equality, but neglects the authoritarian liberal potential of
sovereignty and necropolitics. In this paper, I will counterpoint Rose’s
work by considering several instances of authoritarian liberalism in
scientists’ conduct of genetic research involving Aboriginal peoples
that differentially allocated rights, risks, duties and obligations,
including racist stereotyping and mass violations of informed consent
and dignity. These cases from the USA, Canada, New Zealand and
Taiwan demonstrate how political economic pressures to
commercialize research, patent law, and researchers’ effective legal
impunity contribute to such violations. Rose overemphasizes the
optimizing aspects of biopolitics and governance through freedom
while neglecting aspects of necropolitics and sovereignty within the
assemblages of genetic research.
Introduction
In his influential and oft-cited book, The Politics of Life Itself, the
British sociologist Nikolas Rose sets out a ‘cartography of the present’
focusing on what he terms advanced liberal democracies, in which the
defining feature of contemporary biopower is governance through
freedom within a political economy of hope. He argues that eugenics,
in the sense of genetically purifying and strengthening national
1
b o rd e rla n d s 1 2 :1
populations (exemplified by the Nazi regime), no longer has any role

in contemporary biotechnology. This demise of eugenics leads him to
assert that the concept of race can be integrated justly and usefully
into genetic research without engaging in discriminatory racism,
despite it being socially constructed and having numerous problems.
A very significant problem arises in Rose’s analysis of race in

contemporary genetic research, because of his focus on populations
that are governed through freedom and his neglect of areas within
advanced liberal polities that are ruled through authoritarian
liberalism. He marginalizes authoritarian liberalism by mentioning it
only in passing, such as saying that contemporary bio-citizenship is
‘differentially territorialized’ and not all are equal (Rose 2007, p.132).
He contends that racism is not a major concern, because scientists
who advocate overtly racist views are marginalized (Rose 2007, p.
167-8). However, Rose’s conclusion that racism is no longer practised
to a significant extent in genetic research in advanced liberal polities
must be qualified. For, as we will see in the second half of this article,
genetic researchers and institutions have routinely subjected
Indigenous peoples within advanced liberal polities to forms of racially
configured authoritarian liberal practices.i
In this paper, I will counterpoint Rose’s work by considering several

cases of authoritarian liberalism in scientists’ conduct of racist genetic
research. These cases are not merely isolated instances. Rather,
these cases have directly involved prominent institutions, well-known
genetic researchers, and several thousand Indigenous people as
research subjects. As well, by geneticizing disease and positing
genetic predispositions to alcoholism and violence, these cases affect
millions of Indigenous people within advanced liberal polities such as
the USA, New Zealand, Canada and Taiwan, and in the Third World.
In these cases, involved genetic researchers have organized
assemblages that have variously differentially allocated and denied
rights, imposed risks and extremely onerous obligations, contributed
to racist stereotyping, and committed mass violations of informed
consent and dignity. This analysis shows how Rose emphasizes the
optimizing aspects of biopolitics and governance through freedom,
while neglecting the more authoritarian liberal coercive aspects of
necropolitics, law, and particularly sovereignty within the assemblages
of genetic research.
Authoritarian Liberalism
Liberalism rests on a contradiction in which the exercise of freedom is

based on the ability to exercise a sort of authoritarianism over the self
(Valverde 1996; Dean 2002). At ‘the heart of the juridical and political
notions of autonomy lies an ethical despotism prior to any division
between those capable of bearing the freedoms and responsibilities of
mature subjectivity and those who are not’ (Dean 2002, p. 46). This
capacity for self-despotism is the basis of differentiation between
those deemed self-governing self-actualizing subjects (who willingly
2
follow their own ‘inner despot’) and those subjects who are deemed
incapable due to lack of education, responsibility, some inherent
capacity to self-govern, or those like Aboriginal peoples that impeded
or resisted conquest and subjugation of territory (Dean 2002, p. 48-
49).
Sovereignty and Biopolitics
In the following section, I will show how imposition of distinctions

between those deemed worthy of self-governance and those who are
not, involves the enactment of sovereignty, biopolitics, law and
necropolitics through differentiating technologies of racism. Then, I will
consider how these processes can occur within genetic research
assemblages.
In the final lecture in Society Must Be Defended (2003), Foucault

analyzed how biopolitics intertwined with sovereignty beginning in the
1800s:
And I think that one of the greatest transformations political right

underwent in the nineteenth century was precisely that, I wouldn’t
say exactly that sovereignty’s old right—to take life or let live—was
replaced, but it came to be complemented by a new right which
does not erase the old right but which does penetrate it, permeate
it. This is the right, or rather precisely the opposite right. It is the
power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die. The right of sovereignty was the
right to take life or let live. And then this new right is established:
the right to make live and to let die. (Foucault 2003, p. 241)
In this passage, Foucault recognizes how the sovereign enactment,

exemplified in public executions, was transformed through the
emergence of science and other disciplines aimed at the optimization
of life at the population level through disciplines such as medicine and
sanitation. These disciplines greatly transformed society by increasing
life expectancy, and by decreasing mortality and illness related
morbidity. The emergence of biopolitics marks a significant new way
of reordering society, which is distinct from, yet intertwined with the
sovereignty/law axis (Foucault 1976). This reordering leads to a
central role for science in enacting sovereignty, for part of its authority
applies to the sovereignty/law axis, but is not reducible to it, since it
functions largely through biopolitical normalization.
Foucault’s definition of sovereignty as take-life and law as let-live,

biopolitics as make-live and necropolitics as let-die, can be mapped
through the semiotic square, which is a heuristic device developed by
AJ Greimas of the Paris School of Semiotics. The semiotic square is,
‘both a conceptual network and a visual representation of this
network’ (Hebert 2011, p. 27). I suggest that the semiotic square is
applicable based upon Foucault’s emphasis on the multiplicity of
interrelations between these processes:
3
A central point that tis prior to the treatment towards life.
rather than looking for the single form or the central point from
which all forms of power derive, either by way of consequence or
development, we must begin by letting them operate in their
multiplicity, their differences, their specificity, and their reversibility;
we must therefore study them as relations of force that intersect,
refer to one another, converge, or, on the contrary, come into
conflict and strive to negate one another. (Foucault 2003, p. 265-6)
This mapping allows us to conceptualize further the potential range of

relations between the enactment of processes that we term sovereignty
and law with biopolitics and necropolitics. The semiotic square involves
two basic opposing or contrary terms A and B that can be variously
negated and combined to generate ten different combinations (based on
Hebert 2011).
Figure 1: Semiotic Square of Sovereignty and Biopolitics.
Foucault’s original formulation considers the opposition between P1

sovereignty as make-die and P2 biopolitics as make-live. He then uses
negation to create distinctions within each term. First, sovereignty is
negated into P4 not-make-die, which is equivalent to law or let-live,
because law represents a restriction on the sovereign right to take-life.
Therefore, we can view law in terms of the ‘different techniques of
constraint that it implements’ (Foucault 2003, p. 266). Second,
biopolitics (P2) as make-live can be negated into not-make-live (P3),
4
which is equivalent to let-die (‘let’ is an active verb) or ‘disallow it to the

point of death’ (Foucault 1976, p. 138). This negation of biopolitics as
let-die corresponds to the politics of death, known as necropolitics or
thanatopolitics, which Foucault considered the flipside of biopolitics.
Negation is understood not only in its strictly logical sense, ‘but involves
the connotations of denial, absence, and disregard’ (Peeters 1989, p.
121). Furthermore, the relationships between take-life and let-live, and
also make-live and let-die, are not mutually exclusive or dichotomized;
rather, these are graduated, and can all be present to varying degrees in
different situations. We have to pay attention to how these processes
reinforce or contradict each other depending upon the position.
Foucault addressed this apparent paradox at the centre of the

fundamental opposition between sovereignty and biopower: ‘Given that
this power’s objective is essentially to make live, how can it let die? How
can the power of death, the function of death, be exercised in a political
system centred upon biopower?’ (Foucault 2003, p. 254). Foucault argued
that racism was the key to differentiating who lives and who dies. This
concept of racism focuses on governance through discriminatory
practices. Racism is, ‘in short, a way of establishing a biological type
caesura within a population that appears to be a biological domain’ which
allows power, ‘to treat the species, to subdivide the species it controls,
into the subspecies known, precisely, as races. That is the first function of
racism: to fragment, to create caesuras within the biological continuum
addressed by biopower’ (Foucault 2003, p. 255). Within this fundamental
set of relations, Foucault posited that racism, ‘is primarily a way of
introducing a break into the domain of life that is under power’s control:
the break between what must live and what must die’ (Foucault 2003, p.
255). Critically, he argued that racism is central to how the sovereign
function of taking-life is deployed within a matrix of biopolitical relations
(Foucault 2003; Mills 2007). Racism’s role requires that we consider in
more detail the interaction between these processes. Therefore, we will
elaborate further on the above four corner semiotic square and consider
the various combinations of terms.
5
Figure 2: Metaterms of sovereignty and biopolitics.
The metaterms are combinations of P1, P2, P3, and P4:
P5: (P1 + P2): The combination of sovereignty as take-life and

biopolitics as make-live creates an inherently contradictory
combination of take-life/make-live, as Foucault describes above.
P6: (P3 + P4): This position is the combination of not-let-die/not-let-

live, the opposition of necropolitics with law. Like P5, this is an
unstable configuration.
P7 (P1 + P3): take-life/let-die is an intensified area of death. This

position is where the distinction between necropolitics and the
exercise of sovereignty in taking life becomes blurred (Agamben
1998; Mbembe 2003). This metaterm accords with conditions in which
people have less access to the means of biopolitical optimization and
their rights are derogated, which is further reinforced by sovereign
take-life interventions.
P8 (P2 + P4): Make-live/not-take-life is an intensified zone of life that

combines optimizing aspects of biopolitics and the protective function
of law. This metaterm accords with the political economy of hope.
P9 (P1 + P4): Make-live/not-let-live is a boundary or zone of transition

between sovereignty and law.
P10 (P2 + P3): Make-live/let-die is a boundary or zone of transition

between biopolitics and necropolitics.
6
Mapping the Political Economy of Hope
In The Politics of Life Itself, Rose charts out what he terms a

‘cartography of the present’ based around a political economy of
hope. For example, citing case studies of Huntington’s disease,
sickle-cell anaemia, and PXE, he considers how those affected by
genetic disorders have actively constituted and mobilized these
biological-based social identities, to deal with these difficulties within
this political economy:
The ethos of hope links together different actors – actual or

potential sufferers for a cure, scientists and researchers seeking a
breakthrough that will make their name and advance their career,
doctors and health care professionals wanting a therapy that will
help treat their patients, biotech companies aiming for products that
generate profit, governments looking for industrial and commercial
developments that will generate employment and stimulate
economic activity and international competitiveness. Hence, the
term used by Carlos Novas: this is a political economy of hope.
(Rose 2007, p. 14)
This formulation involves a high degree of inclusion within the polis of

decision-making, because Rose considers that these disparate
agents, including those affected by a disease, government, scientists,
and capital, will all achieve to some extent their respective goals.
There are implicit underlying notions of non-exploitation and non-
repression. Particularly important is how those affected by disease are
able to engage equitably in negotiations with scientists and
government. This transformed power relation, Rose argues,
distinguishes contemporary biopolitics from eugenics regimes.
The shift from the institutionalized racism of eugenics involves moving

from the contradictions of P1-P2-P5 to the political economy of hope
with its complementary configuration of P2-P4-P8. In the political
economy of hope, citizens enjoy optimizing biopolitical measures (P2)
and governance through freedom since they are protected and
enabled by law (P4) and not directly subject to sovereign violence or
necropolitics. Similarly, legal equality seems implied in the ability of
biosocialities, such as those affected by genetic disease, to engage in
negotiations with genetic researchers and government, and exert
agency without entailing discrimination. For an important condition of
the exercise of governance through freedom is that those who are
affected by genetic diseases are also self-actualizing. For they are not
only expected and obligated to, but also do so willingly and have the
required resources to be able to engage with both their disease and in
these negotiations (Rose 2007, p. 124-5). Overall, Rose’s formulation
posits a highly inclusive political economy of governance.
In support of this formulation, Rose delineates a strong distinction

between eugenics regimes of the early and mid-twentieth century and
contemporary biopower. The old eugenics regimes sought to
maximize racially configured fitness at a national level:
7
Contemporary biopolitics in advanced liberal polities does not take

the living body of the race and its vital components as resources
whose fitness is to be maximized in a competitive struggle between
states. And while the lives, illnesses, and troubles of many may be
ignored or marginalized in contemporary political economies of
vitality, to let die is not to make die—no “sovereign” wills or plans
the sickness and death of our fellow citizens. (Rose 2007, p. 58)
As the semiotic square diagrams illustrate above, letting die (P3) is

not equivalent to making die (P1), but they are complementary and in
practice intertwined. For the sovereign decision on the application of
law, particularly the differentiation of legal obligations (including
onerous burdens), rights, benefits, and risks among involved
disparate agents, along the P1-P4 axis works to contribute to letting
die. As well, Foucault defined making-die (‘killing’) broadly. Under
authoritarian liberalism, P1 take-life plus P3 let-die forms a
complementary deixis. Together they create the metaterm of P7, an
intensified zone where necropolitics and punitive sovereignty are
dominant. Because of the graduated relationships, elements of
biopolitics and legal protections may persist, but at a much reduced
level or more repressive character. P1-P3-P7 together forms a range
of marginalized zones where P1 sovereignty as take-life and P3
necropolitics as let-die tend to be complementary and mutually
reinforcing. This complementarity is a key feature, as Foucault states:
If the power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign

right to kill, it must become racist. And if, conversely, a power of
sovereignty, or in other words, a power that has the right of life and
death, wishes to work with the instruments, mechanisms, and
technology of normalization, it too must become racist. When I say
“killing,” I obviously do not mean simply murder as such, but also
every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to
death, increasing the risk of death for some peoples, or, quite
simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on. (Foucault
2003, p. 256)
Hence, racism is central to the interweaving of biopower and

sovereignty that constitutes and organizes those subjects and
populations who are included within P2-P4-P8 and those who are
excluded in zones outside.
However, Rose considers that racist discrimination in contemporary

genetic research is not a major problem, arguing that those scientists
who assert overtly racist hierarchies are considered outside the
mainstream (Rose 2007, p. 167-8). He continues that in the 1970s,
genetic concepts of race appeared to be on their way out as various
findings showed humans and chimpanzees shared some 98% of their
genetics and that genetic differences in DNA within groups were
greater than differences between groups. ‘However a new molecular
conception of population difference rapidly emerged out of genomic
thinking,’ one that was distinct from eugenics-era ‘molar’ level
concepts of race (Rose 2007, p. 168). For evidence of this, he cites
the example of the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP). He
8
quotes one of the arguments by the influential population geneticist L.

L. Cavalli-Sforza, one of the HGDP’s original proponents, that the
HGDP would increase knowledge of genomic diversity and thereby
‘make a significant contribution to the elimination of racism’ (Cavalli-
Sforza quoted in Rose 2007, p. 168). Rose continues:
While there were many critics of this project, by 1991 it was

“adopted” by HUGO, the Human Genome Organization, which
provided US$1.2 million to set up workshops to develop the
technical and organizational aspects of the project, to consider the
social and ethical implications, and to conduct a pilot study. (Rose
2007, p. 168)
Rose only describes the project as having many critics and cites that
new ethical frameworks were developed as part of his account of how
conceptions of race have regained a role in genetic research. This
brief summary does not acknowledge or consider how involved
Indigenous peoples from many countries, including the USA and New
Zealand, argued this project was a biocolonial violation of their
sovereignty and dignity nor how their transnational organizing efforts
over several years stopped the HGDP from progressing beyond its
initial planning stages (Barker 2004; Harry and Kanehe 2006;
Reardon 2001).ii
Rose uses the example of an African-American genetic database that

has been set up at Howard University as evidence of how African-
Americans are utilizing race as a social category, which nonetheless
has biomedical utility (Rose 2007, p. 174-5). Therefore, he criticizes
how many social scientists are still reflexively suspicious of how ‘race
and ethnicity’ are transformed through the ‘geneticization of identity,’
quoting Lippman’s definition of geneticization (1992): ‘The individual
affixed with a genetic label can be isolated from the context in which
s/he became sick. ...The individual, not society, is seen to require
change; social problems improperly become individual pathologies’
(Lippman 1992, p. 1472–73; as quoted in Rose 2007, p. 176-7). Citing
examples such as African-Americans affected by sickle-cell anaemia
and Ashkenazi Jews affected by Tay-Sachs disease, Rose argues
that those affected by genetic disorders are not passive because they
actively integrate such genetic information on risks and
predispositions into new conceptions of personhood that are not
individually isolating, but rather lead to new forms of biosocialization
along racial lines:
And, in advanced liberal democracies at least, the biopolitics of

identity is very different from that which characterized eugenics.
The molecular rewriting of personhood in the age of genomics is
linked to the development of novel “life strategies” for individuals
and their families, involving choice, enterprise, self-naturalization,
and prudence in relation to one’s genetic makeup. And these
genetic practices of individuation provide new ways in which
individuals are locating themselves within communities of obligation
and self-identification delineated by race. (Rose 2007, p. 177)
9
In this view, genetic identities that integrate race can no longer be

automatically equated with racism as racial discrimination, at least in
advanced liberal democracies. He cites the example of race being
mobilized within healthcare including African Americans being
targeted in a pharmaceutical corporation’s sponsorship of testing for
glaucoma (Rose 2007, p. 181-2). In short, Rose contends that race
can be translated into a non-discriminatory identification that can be
mobilized by those affected by genetic disorders.
Rose mentions the ways in which Native American identity is

integrated as a racial category into the US census and how such
categories often problematically become reified in practice (Rose
2007, p. 172-3). In his analysis of racism and genetics, he renders
genetic research of some Indigenous peoples being on the plus-side
and others on the minus-side. On the plus side, he cites the example
of how the Lemba of South Africa have used genetic testing to
support their claims to Jewish ancestry. On the minus-side, he cites
the example of the San and Koi Koi of South Africa rejecting genetic
testing for a shared ancestry, due to their respective assertions of
being distinct from and superior to the other. As well, he cites how the
Lakota Sioux in the USA are concerned about migrations research
undermining their claims to land by positioning them as merely the
earliest settlers. He terms these minus-side examples ‘damage to
identity,’ which ignores the sovereignty and legal ramifications of such
representation (Rose 2007, p. 178-9). Rose argues it is not clear
whether individual or community consultations and informed consent
will be able to deal with the ways in which a small number of
‘determined individuals’ may provide samples that can be used to
represent an Aboriginal people, so he concludes:
Inescapably, that is to say, the generation and diffusion of genomic

styles of thought in the delineation of populations will challenge and
sometimes transform the very ways in which individuals and groups
come to understand their affinities and distinctions. Rewritten at the
genomic level, visualized through a molecular optic, bound up with
novel self-technologies, identity and race are both transformed.
(Rose 2007, p. 179)
Rose does not investigate and analyse genetic research involving

Indigenous peoples further, so his conclusion is little more than an
overgeneralization that says some Indigenous peoples win while
others lose when identity is rewritten at the genomic level.
At first, this conclusion appears consistent with the idea that attention
must be paid to the individual cases and that such analysis reveals
genetic research outcomes are not predetermined, and Indigenous
peoples can use these to their advantage. In the remainder of this
article, through an analysis of several cases, I will show that Rose’s
analysis involves an underlying reification in how he does not
seriously question the hierarchies of the political economy of genetic
research on Indigenous peoples within advanced liberal polities.
10
Rose marginalizes the importance of how genetic researchers

organize and do most of this molecular-level rewriting within genetic
research assemblages, both in doing the primary research and
mediating public knowledge about research findings and their larger
social significance. These cases suggest the following:
1. He does not discuss how genetic researchers who do the molecular

rewriting consistently realize the gains from such research; whereas
Aboriginal peoples are often forced to carry the risks and any damage
including stigmatization and the geneticization of disease that is
arguably rooted in social and political factors like poverty and
systemic racism.
2. Genetic researchers view genes as causal agents, molecular

manifestations of the state of nature whose detrimental agency is
supposed to justify legally and morally the denial of rights, and the
imposition of onerous obligations and risks in genetic research
assemblages, all in the service of science and humanity.
Authoritarian Liberalism in Advanced Liberal Polities
In this second part of the article, I will consider cases involving

authoritarian liberal practices by genetic researchers within four of the
advanced liberal democracies, which are also settler states. Together
these four settler states have a total of over 5.6 million Indigenous
people: New Zealand (680,000), Canada (1,400,000), the United
States (3,000,000+), and Taiwan (500,000+). My major focus here is
not to contest Rose’s ideas about race potentially being used as an
identifier by some groups within advanced liberal polities and the
political economy of hope (P2-P4-P8). Rather, it is to understand how
assemblages also based within advanced liberal polities conduct
racially configured research that is authoritarian liberal in how it
routinely imposes racially stigmatizing subjectivities, onerous
obligations and risks upon involved Aboriginal peoples and violates
their rights and sovereignty with impunity. Critically, these cases
involve the enactment of racism as a technology of sovereignty within
the assemblages based in advanced liberal polities and governed by
its dominant values, norms and legislation. Involved researchers and
institutions have engaged in their own sorts of racially configured
authoritarian liberal practices when they have enrolled and become
spokespeople for Indigenous peoples by constituting assemblages
that articulate their institutions based in P2-P4-P8 with Indigenous
research subjects within P1-P3-P7 zones. These assemblages
impose strong differentials in recognition of rights, obligations, and
risks. However, as the above case of the HGDP indicates, and we will
see further below, involved Indigenous peoples’ organizing can
disrupt and destabilize these assemblages by challenging scientists’
authority to represent Indigenous peoples.
11
Aboriginal peoples and the State of Nature
During the early and mid-20th century, eugenics as a discourse,

legislation, and governance practices was translated in various settler
jurisdictions. Indigenous peoples were subjected to eugenics
measures and attendant forced assimilation projects. This
authoritarian liberalism was well summarized by Duncan Campbell
Scott, head of Canada’s Department of Indian Affairs, who in 1920
stated his government’s infamous policy: ‘Our objective is to continue
until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed
into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian
department.’ Aboriginal peoples were identified as being wards of the
state and subjects of settler societies’ fiduciary duty to ‘civilize’ the
world. Aboriginal peoples’ inclusion within the Canadian body politic
expressly required exclusion of their identity as Aboriginal peoples.
Eugenics type thinking about purification and strengthening of the
nation certainly informed such forced assimilation practices like forced
adoption, and direct eugenics practices such as forced sterilization
were also disproportionately targeted at Indigenous peoples in
Canada and the USA (Ralstin-Lewis 2005). The cumulative goal of
these programs was to forcibly assimilate Aboriginal peoples into the
settler state, while those who failed to comply, particularly women who
were deemed retarded or promiscuous, would be forcibly sterilized or
otherwise controlled (Ralstin-Lewis 2005). Under eugenics, Aboriginal
peoples were identified as manifestations of the state of nature, who
were genetically incapable of direct inclusion in the body politic of the
settler state, as long as they were unassimilated. These eugenics and
forced assimilation practices continued in some settler jurisdictions
until the 1970s (Ralstin-Lewis 2005).
Rose argues that the contemporary role of race in genetic concepts of

disease and disorders in advanced liberal polities may place pressure
on individuals from certain cultural or racial groupings to limit their
risks of having children with genetic disorders associated with that
grouping. However, race is used neither in ‘constituting and
legitimating a hierarchy of differences’ nor in improving the quality of
the population (Rose 2007 p. 161). Certainly eugenics-type policies
for improving population quality are gone. However, there remains an
underlying legitimization of hierarchies in how genetic research has
consistently constituted Aboriginal peoples as the premodern Other,
who continue to be disproportionately affected by their ancient
ancestors’ exposure to death in a state of nature, experiences that are
supposedly molecularly etched in their genetics. This type of research
posits that Aboriginal peoples’ genetic inheritance is adapted to
premodern ways of life and can adversely affect their abilities to adapt
to rapid social change typical of modernity. In this way, genetic
research attributes differences in health and social outcomes to these
lingering traces of life in a state of nature, something that fits well with
contemporary neoliberalism.
12
Beginning in the 1980s, Aboriginal peoples were quickly redesignated

as genetically predisposed to various diseases under modernity. This
idea of Aboriginal peoples’ genes being shaped by their ancestors’
exposure to death in a state of nature is evident in the thrifty gene
hypothesis. This hypothesis was originally first conceived in the early
1960s, and posits that Aboriginal peoples’ ancestors’ genetics were
shaped by frequent famines and conditions of food scarcity, so they
would put on weight during times of food abundance in preparation for
times of food scarcity. However, today, the hypothesis contends
Aboriginal peoples’ metabolisms have not adapted to modern
conditions in which plenty of food is available and so they tend to
develop diabetes (Poudrier 2007). After many years of research,
genetic evidence is inconclusive and there are plenty of sociological
explanations available, particularly the relationship between diabetes
and poverty (Poudrier 2007). As well, anthropological studies of
famine among existing hunter-gatherer societies suggest that famines
were too infrequent to have any such genetic effect (Benyshek and
Watson 2005; Poudrier 2007; Speakman 2006). However, the thrifty
gene hypothesis has circulated widely in Canada and the United
States gaining the status of fact, and has been translated in other
countries. For example, in Taiwan it is used to account for rising
diabetes rates among Taiwan Aborigines (e.g. Central News Agency
2004).
Alcoholism carries a powerful stigma and contributes to high levels of

morbidity and mortality among many Aboriginal peoples. It is popularly
viewed as a form of social weakness that leads to anomie, and a
breakdown of society approximating a state of nature, replete with
violence and death, a vice that signifies an incapacity for governing
the self and justifies authoritarian liberal governance (Valverde 1996,
p. 365). Eugenics-era genetic determinism influenced views that
Aboriginal peoples were hereditarily predisposed to alcoholism have
been reinvigorated and reconstituted by genetic research. These
concepts of alcoholism being genetically determined have been
translated in different settler jurisdictions. While Taiwan Aborigines,
who today number over 500,000 out of Taiwan’s population of 24
million, were not targeted by eugenics-type regimes, these Aboriginal
peoples were subjected to the colonial expropriation of their territories
and forced assimilation under a succession of colonizers: the Dutch
(1624-1661), Koxinga (1661-1683), the Ching Dynasty (1683-1895),
the Japanese colonial regime (1895-1945) and the KMT Chinese
nationalist dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Chiang Ching-
kuo (1945-1987). There were very low levels of alcoholism in the
1940s and 1950s among four Taiwan Aboriginal peoples studied by
Rin and Lin, about 0.1 percent (13 of 11,442) compared to 0.01
percent among settlers (2 of 19,931) (Rin and Lin 1962, p. 138). It is
possible to account for the rapid rise of Aboriginal alcoholism rates as
a function of this history of social upheavals and losses of territory
during the Japanese colonization and the intensification of exploitation
by the KMT regime during Taiwan’s so-called economic ‘miracle’ after
World War II (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010; Munsterhjelm 2013).
However, research articles published in Western and Taiwan-based
13
journals began to speculate upon genetic factors in the mid-1980s, as

there had been a rapid rise in rates of alcoholism among Taiwan
Aborigines, variously estimated from 15 percent to 25 percent or more
compared to about 1.5 percent among settlers (Munsterhjelm 2013).
These explanations focused on the differences between Chinese
settlers and Aborigines in the variants (alleles) of ADH and ALDH
genes involved in the metabolization of alcohol in the liver
(Munsterhjelm, 2005; 2013). For example, Hwu et al (1990, p. 378)
argued that the approximately ten-fold difference in alcoholism rates
was because about half of Chinese settlers in Taiwan have an
inactive allele that predisposes them to flushing when they drink
alcohol (commonly called ‘Asian Flush’), which they argued acted as a
deterrence to alcoholism. In contrast, only about 5 percent of Taiwan
Aborigines experience this unpleasant reaction (Hwu 1990, p. 378):
In summary, the difference in prevalence of rates of alcoholism in

Chinese and aborigines may be explained by metabolic
differences. The fast-flushing response because of deficient ALDH-
I activity may be an effective aversive protective mechanism in
Chinese against developing both AA [alcohol abuse] and AD
[alcohol dependence] alcoholism. (Hwu et al 1990, p. 379)
Because of such research, by the late 1990s, differences in

alcoholism rates between settlers and Aborigines were popularly
ascribed to these differences in genetic factors (Munsterhjelm 2013).
For example, a prominent researcher on Taiwan Aboriginal health, Ko
Ying-chin was quoted in a 1998 Taiwan government mass media
report that Aborigines were ‘genetically predisposed to alcoholism’
(Hsu 1998). Furthermore, Ko advocated interventions in Aboriginal
communities by state institutions and other concerned groups to deal
with the problem, so that genetic predispositions became premises for
governance practices (Hsu 1998). Knowledge of this genetic research
done on Taiwan Aborigines circulated in scientific journals and was
translated by New Zealand settler scientists as a factor in high levels
of Maori alcoholism (e.g. Atkinson 1998) (Munsterhjelm 2013). This
attribution of differences in alcoholism rates between settlers and
Aboriginal peoples to racial differences in alcoholism metabolism
genes contributes to the justification of social hierarchy and
geneticizes a historically recent social problem, something that
contradicts Rose’s analysis.
In Taiwan, this genetic determinism contributed to settlers’ negative

stereotypes of Aborigines: ‘the popular [settler] perception of
Indigenous peoples is invariably in one form or another of social
pathology in need of social relief at best, or to be condemned to their
own miserable destiny resulting from genetic defects at worst’ (Shih
1999). In general, settler views were that Aborigines were at best
capable of being trained, but at worst genetically damned. These
concepts of Aborigines being genetically inferior even became part of
political discourse. My search of Chinese language news reports on
the Factiva database reveals that Ma Ying-jeou, who is now President
of Taiwan (first elected in 2008), was quoted in news reports as
14
publicly stating on at least 15 occasions between 2002 and 2007, a

variation of a phrase that ‘Aborigines’ genes are not a problem, lack of
opportunities is’ (Munsterhjelm 2013). Ma’s comments were sharply
criticized by Aboriginal leaders as reproducing negative stereotypes
by implying Aborigines might have genetic problems (Loa 2007). Ma
only dropped this phrase after a major controversy in December 2007
over these and other condescending comments towards Aborigines
(Loa 2007; Munsterhjelm 2013). Genetic research was readily
integrated into settlers’ racist negative stereotypes about Aborigines.
Central to the practices of eugenics and forced assimilation was the

racist construction of Aboriginal peoples as morally inferior, irrational
and potentially violent threats to social order and well-being. A central
rhetorical device in racist conceptions is the state of nature and its
supposed manifestations. It is a shared mutual opposition to the state
of nature that has shaped the definition of sovereignty and biopower.
In semiotic terms, the state of nature is the anti-subject, the
antithetical and antagonistic opponent that both sovereignty and
biopolitics work against. The state of nature is a state of war, if not
open warfare then its constant threat, for, ‘It goes on even when the
State has been constituted, and Hobbes sees it as a threat that wells
up in the State’s interstices, at its limits and on its frontiers’ (Foucault
2003, p. 90). These supposed manifestations of the state of nature
include, for example criminals who are deemed at war with those they
victimize, Aboriginal peoples who live as if in a war of all against all,
and states who threaten the state (Foucault 2003, p. 90). In this way,
the state of nature functions as the ever-present threat against which
the assertion and exercise of sovereignty is ultimately and must be
perpetually defined.
The sovereign in taking-life does so in opposition to the state of

nature. Within the P1-P3-P7 complementary configuration, the law
changes and becomes much more disciplinary, working more visibly
in hand with sovereign-type powers, because of the supposed
proximity to the state of nature, anomie, and chaos. The exercise of
prerogative powers in genetic research assemblages fits with how,
‘the state of nature has been integrated into civil society’ for, ‘in a
modern polity rule of law facilitates the suspension of law and thus
prerogative (and the State of Nature) is inextricably linked to the rule
of law rather than signifying its absolute negation’ (Arnold 2007, p.
23). According to Locke ‘where law was silent,’ provided the ruler is
‘wise,’ ‘prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good
without a rule’ (quoted in Arnold, 2007, p. 10). There is a distinction
between those deemed fit for governance through freedom and those
deemed as still affected to varying degrees by the state of nature
were subject to coercive authoritarian liberal training, authoritarian
governance or simply deemed beyond the pale:
Correspondingly, liberal democratic governance (guided by the rule

of law) administers civil society and prerogative power (the
suspension of law) is deployed in the State of Nature. Thus, as
Giorgio Agamben (among others) argues, the State of Nature does
15
not precede civil society but is internal to it. It would follow that
those who would become objects of prerogative power domestically
would be the disenfranchised, those who were conceived of as
inhabiting the State of Nature. (Arnold 2005: para 55)
Under eugenics, the arrogation and exercise of prerogative powers by

racial hygienists was justified by assertions that those with ‘defective’
genetic traits were manifestations of the state of nature that
endangered the well-being of society and quality of the population. In
contrast, today the global assemblages that span and articulate
transnational biotechnology, genetic researchers, and settler state
institutions seek out genetic manifestations of the state of nature, like
the thrifty gene or alcoholism genes, as part of risk reduction-based
governance of health and the self. But in doing so, these
assemblages constitute Indigenous peoples as having molecularly
etched manifestations of the state of nature in their genetics due to
their ancestors’ constant exposure to death, manifestations that
contribute to negative social outcomes.
These genetic etched traces were significant in how New Zealand-

based settler scientists attempted in 2006 to attribute high levels of
criminality and violence among Maori to an allele (variant) of the
monoamine oxidase gene (MAO-A).iii Over 680,000 people in New
Zealand identify as Māori, out of the total population of 4.4 million
(Statistics New Zealand 2012). In a conference presentation abstract
Lea et al state: ‘Historically, the New Zealand Maoris were extremely
adventurous risk takers and fearsome warriors. A DNA repeat
polymorphism in the neuronal Monoamine Oxidase (MAO) gene on
the X chromosome is strongly associated with risk taking and
aggressive behaviour’ (Lea et al 2006). This imagery of the ancestors
of the Maori as fearsome warriors who settled the vastness of the
Pacific involves an underlying imagery of the ancestors immersed in
the state of nature, constantly exposed to death. They assert their
research, ‘revealed [a] striking over-representation of the MAO repeat
polymorphism in the Maori male population compared to Caucasian
males’ (Lea et al 2006; my emphasis). For Lea et al, Caucasian males
are the norm against which Maori males are assessed to be aberrant.
These scientists recklessly mobilized the very controversial ‘warrior’
image of Maori popularized in films like Once Were Warriors, when
they argued that the, ‘MAO haplotype is associated with the Warrior
allele in Maori males suggesting that variation in the MAO gene has
been under the influence of positive selection during the risky
Polynesian voyages and wars’ (Lea et al 2006). Lea et al assert that
positive selection had etched capacities for violence and risk taking in
the genes of the Maori. According to the press conference that
accompanied this presentation:
But he [Lea] said the presence of the gene also “goes a long way
to explaining some of the problems Maoris have”.
“Obviously, this means they are going to be more aggressive and

violent and more likely to get involved in risk-taking behaviour like
16
gambling,” Dr Lea said before his presentation to the International

Congress of Human Genetics in Brisbane. (Once Were Warriors,
2006)
This conference presentation led to a major controversy in New

Zealand in which Lea and Chambers were sharply criticized for
genetic essentialism, an unrepresentative sample size of only
seventeen, and failure to consider the divisiveness and racist
implications of their research (Mead 2007; Munsterhjelm 2013).
In response to the sharp criticism they received, Lea initially tried to

downplay the significance of this allele in August 2006 media
interviews (e.g. Lewis 2006). However, later in 2007 in an article in the
New Zealand Medical Journal, these scientists tried to reassert the
legitimacy of their research, saying they had been misquoted and
misunderstood in the mass media, and by arguing their efforts were to
bring ‘personalized disease treatments’ to the Maori (Lea and
Chambers 2007, p. 4):
Indeed, ignoring evolutionary forces (such as gene selection), and

assuming that all population subgroups have the same genetic
background when designing diagnostic, prevention, and treatment
regimes, is both unscientific and unethical and destined to do
minority groups such as Maori a disservice in terms of health care.
(Lea and Chambers 2007, p. 5)
Lea and Chambers essentially argue that they have a fiduciary duty to
investigate these ‘evolutionary forces’ that supposedly contribute to
Maori community violence or else the Maori will suffer. In terms of the
semiotic square, both Lea et al’s original conference presentation and
Lea and Chambers’ later response to the criticism constitute Maori in
the authoritarian liberal zone of P1-P3-P7, outside of the political
economy of hope due to Maori genes readily manifesting the state of
nature. Critically, Maori did not have a direct role in initiating or
overseeing this MAO-A research project, and the Maori as a whole
were stigmatized by it. For Lea et al place a source of violence within
Maori communities, a warrior gene within Maori biology—the state of
nature etched within. Again, genetic researchers attempted to
constitute an assemblage that imposed a racially hierarchical
differentiation between settlers and an Indigenous people; however,
the assemblage was destabilized by concerted Maori and settler
supporter criticism (Munsterhjelm 2013).
Rose’s account of the political economy of hope considers that if a

group or population in an advanced liberal polity is affected by some
apparently hereditary disorder and approaches scientists for help,
scientists will respect their rights and dignity in a reciprocal mutually
beneficial negotiated relationship, one that is supported by various
sorts of legal and ethical protections. Yet authoritarian liberalism is
also evident in the actual practices of research. In particular, these
research assemblages frequently try to exercise a sort of prerogative
power in how they impose onerous obligations upon Aboriginal people
17
that involved scientists can use their genetics in research that

scientists deem serves humanity and the greater good. Furthermore,
these scientists maintain that ‘excessive’ concern about Aboriginal
rights will impede and harm scientific progress and Aboriginal
peoples’ health. For example, in 1989 members of the Havasupai
Indigenous people, who live in the Grand Canyon in Arizona,
approached Arizona State University researchers for help in
understanding the high incidence of diabetes among their people.
However, though researchers quickly found no genetic links to
diabetes and abandoned diabetes research by 1992, the Havasupai
samples were used for research, first, on schizophrenia, which
Havasupai viewed as stigmatizing and, second, human migrations,
which undermined Havasupai origin stories (Bommersbach 2008;
Harmon 2010). The Havasupai learned of these violations in 2003 and
began to publicly demand the return of their samples and damages for
these major violations. The lead scientist Therese Markow through
her lawyer called the Havasupai claims about the case ‘hysterical’
(Minard 2005). Similarly, the prominent science journal Nature stated:
Some ethicists suggest that an obsession with the details of

consent have caused research subjects to forget they have an
opportunity to help not only their tribe, but all mankind. For Native
Americans, this is a hard concept to accept. Having seen their
people and cultures abused for centuries, they are understandably
hypersensitive. But it could be a new form of empowerment for
them to realize that their culture helped cure disease. (Nature 2004,
p. 489)
The Nature editorial entitled ‘Tribal Culture Versus Genetics’ renders

the dispute as Havasupai cultural beliefs clashing with genetics, and
downplays the legal and ethical violations. Furthermore, it argues that
the Havasupai are being ‘hypersensitive’ and have an obligation to
contribute to humanity by cooperating with researchers in curing
disease.
The Nature editorial criticized the Havasupai people’s actions as a

violation of this obligation to serve as research subjects in a sweeping
attack on what it considered to be Aboriginal peoples’ unwarranted
litigiousness: ‘Gaming revenues provide better community services
and chances to eliminate the sicknesses of poverty that for
generations have plagued reservations. But too often this new-found
economic clout is used to further litigation for tribal political purposes’
(Nature 2004, p. 489). The Havasupai do not have a casino, but
received some funding from other Aboriginal peoples who do (Dalton
2004). The editorial contends that while revenues from gambling had
enriched many reservations, such funding was being misdirected,
because this court case was politically motivated, in effect rejecting
that the Havasupai had a legitimate grievance. Furthermore, Nature
said this litigation was also a threat to Aboriginal peoples’ health since
‘sensitive, caring scientists’ would avoid doing such research due to
concerns over legal problems. The case eventually went to court and
was finally settled in 2010 in an out-of-court settlement in which the
18
samples were returned and ASU paid compensation of $700,000 to

the Havasupai (Reardon and TallBear 2012). Researchers and their
Indigenous research subjects are co-constituted in the organizing
narratives of this genetic research (Munsterhjelm 2013). Involved
scientists follow organizing narratives in which they co-constitute
themselves as serving humanity by curing disease or understanding
human evolution through their research and Aboriginal peoples’
genetics as manifesting the state of nature as predispositions to
disease, so that Aboriginal participants also have a similar obligation
to serve humanity (including themselves) by acting as research
subjects (Munsterhjelm 2013).
These groups were only able to assert claims through the courts and
extensive lobbying respectively. As the Havasupai case illustrates,
some researchers will, in the name of science, reject repeated calls by
Indigenous peoples for the return of samples, and continue to use the
samples in whatever research they wish. Moreover, when they get
caught committing violations, they often receive support from other
scientific institutions. So in the case of the Havasupai, the prestigious
journal Nature accused the Havasupai of litigiousness and giving
excessive attention to their rights to the detriment of their obligations
to serve the greater good of science.
Within these global assemblages of genetic research, scientists

constitute traces of the state of nature etched within Aboriginal
peoples’ genetics, which justifies them exercising prerogative powers
by imposing obligations and attendant restrictions upon Aboriginal
peoples’ rights in the name of science and the common good. In this
exercise of authoritarian liberalism, involved scientists say they are
serving humanity, which involves a form of self-despotism, and so
they argue should Aboriginal peoples, something also evident in their
actions.
Commodification and the Persistence of the State
The United States is the global center of biotechnology development,

and certainly of genetic research in the political economy of hope.
Rose asserts that very strong ethical impetuses guide the political
economy of hope:
Additionally, as biotech companies seek to commoditize DNA

sequences, tissues, stem cells, skin, cord blood and more, it is
clear that “ethics” has a crucial function in market creation.
Products that do not come with appropriate ethical guarantees,
notably assurances as to “informed consent” of donors, will not find
it easy to travel around the circuits of biocapital. (Rose 2007, p. 16)
This assertion that ethics are central to biotechnology markets implies

ethics provides a market discipline mechanism, rather akin to ethical
branding. Citing the case of a Swedish genomics firm that claims all of
its samples have ‘... been collected with full informed consent,’ Rose
contends that, ‘Ethics and biovalue are inextricably intertwined,
19
contributing to the commercial value of products or demonstrating a

commitment to the ethical values of the bio-citizen-consumer of health
and his or her requirements for trust’ (Rose 2007, p. 153). Yet the
above examples and following cases indicate that some of the most
central institutions in the political economy of hope including the US
National Research Institute, the US Patent and Trademark Office and
researchers in prestigious universities readily engage in conduct that
denies Aboriginal peoples’ rights and dignity based on racially
configured differences in rights and obligations.
In the global assemblages of genetic research, scientists enrol

Aboriginal peoples and translate them into samples and information,
which are mobile, stable and combinable, and can be transported to
what Latour terms ‘centres of accumulation’ (Latour, 1987). The US
National Health Research Institute funded Coriell Cell Repository in
New Jersey, markets a ‘Human Diversity Panel.’ Commercial and
public researchers can add samples from various Indigenous peoples
to their Coriell Internet shopping carts for $55 for a DNA sample and
$85 for a cell line (Coriell Cell Repositories 2009a). These cell lines
were established through a process called ‘immortalization’ in which
cells are modified by infecting them with Epstein-Barr virus, so they
will reproduce indefinitely. Once the cells have been immortalized,
they are placed into a state of suspended animation by freezing them
in liquid nitrogen. When orders arrive, some of the cells are thawed
and grown in a solution of 37°C bovine (calf) fetus serum and various
nutrients (Coriell Cell Repositories 2009b). Once the required number
of cells has been grown, they are packaged and sent by courier to the
purchaser. Now that these cell lines have been established, interested
researchers do not have to travel to involved Aboriginal areas and try
to gain their consent, because the samples can represent Aboriginal
peoples in perpetuity. Scientists are able to use the samples as
sources of data for research papers and commercial patent
applications (e.g. Gabriel, Frudakis and Thomas 2008, para 52, 60,
62). In this way, Aboriginal peoples are excluded from the decision-
making processes (P2-P4-P8) within the assemblages of genetic
research.
The cell lines enter a state of bioservitude and exist as zoe (Agamben
1998), which accords with P1-P3-P7. In this sense, we find a different
role from the glorious war dead, who are also granted a type of
eternal life (c.f. Smith 2000). The eternal life that Aboriginal peoples’
cell lines have as zoe is at the behest of the cell line owner. In return,
the cell lines will continue to work as representatives of the Aboriginal
people, thereby allowing researchers to act as spokesperson for the
Aboriginal people. According to a 1995 paper by Castiglone et al:
All these population samples exist as Epstein-Barr virus-

transformed, lymphoblastoid cell lines (Anderson and Gusella
1984), most of which were established by us under approved
human subjects protocols. The Coriell Institute for Medical
Research (NIGMS Human Genetic Mutant Cell Line Repository) in
Camden, New Jersey has available for distribution 5-10 cell lines
20
from nine of the populations in this study: Ami, Atayal, Biaka, Mbuti,
Druze, Han (S), Maya, Karitiana, and R. Surui. (Castiglione, 1995,
p. 1448; my emphasis)
To exist has connotations of an ahistorical static situation; it is typical

of Eric Wolf’s concept that colonizers view the colonized as peoples
without history (Wolf 1982). The immortalized genetic samples exist in
the service of the genetic researchers, who in turn are acting on
behalf of and at the behest of humanity.
Once commodified in such ways, Indigenous peoples’ rights and

claims are effectively removed. Samples taken in the late 1980s by
the American anthropologist Francis Black from Karitiana Indigenous
people in Brazil have been sold by Coriell since the mid-1990s
(Rohter, 2007; Castiglione et al 1995, p. 1448). Coriell has dismissed
the Karitiana’s repeated calls for the return of the samples (Rohter
2007). Coriell has also ignored the Brazilian government’s requests
for the return of the blood samples and cell lines (Leahy and Osava
2004). As one of the Karitiana leaders stated:
“We were duped, lied to and exploited,” Renato Karitiana, the

leader of the tribal association, said in an interview here on the
tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon, where 313 Karitiana eke
out a living by farming, fishing and hunting. “Those contacts have
been very injurious to us, and have spoiled our attitude toward
medicine and science.” (Rohter, 2007)
According to the New York Times article, ‘Judith Greenberg, director

of genetics and developmental biology at the National Institute of
General Medical Sciences, part of the National Institutes of Health,
dismissed the Karitiana calls for the return of the samples, and stated
that:
We don‘t want to do something that makes a whole tribe or people

unhappy or angry. On the other hand, the scientific community is
using these samples, which were accepted and maintained under
perfectly legitimate procedures, for the benefit of mankind. (Rohter
2007)
Greenberg expressly denies and rejects the Karitiana requests,

arguing that the Karitiana must continue to serve humanity. This is
critical to the underlying mythos that is foundational to genetic
research and its legal interpretation of who has what rights and
obligations.
In addition to claims of serving humanity, Coriell justifies its actions in

part by arguing such samples have been ‘de-identified’ and rendered
anonymous by removing the individual identities associated with the
samples (Coriell Cell Repositories 2011). However, the collective
identities have been retained so they can be marketed as sources of
diversity, i.e. Other. Effectively these samples are rendered as
property that can be bought and sold by Coriell, who also denies
21
Indigenous peoples’ rights. These property claims extend to how

Coriell imposes use restrictions on any purchasers, such as
purchasers being unable to subsequently sell or otherwise distribute
cell lines bought from Coriell (Coriell Cell Repositories 2011). Indeed,
serving humanity is deemed sufficient justification, while legal and
ethical consent of the donors is not required. Therefore, we have the
inclusive-exclusion of Aboriginal peoples as zoe, commodified forms
of life in a state of bioservitude within the political economy of hope.
Blood has powerful metonymic characteristics as a corporeal link to
the incorporeality of the ancestors (Munsterhjelm 2013). Involved
scientists’ ability to use this blood allows them to represent living and
dead Indigenous peoples in scientific knowledge and in the polis of
decision-making within the assemblages of genetic research. This
ability to represent involved Aboriginal peoples within the polis is
based on scientists’ ability to exclude Aboriginal people from
participating in the polis.
Patents as Systemic Exclusion
As the above Coriell example illustrates, some scientists can and do

maintain an implicit view of Aboriginal peoples’ samples as property.
Such property relations are much more overtly expressed in patenting
processes. A patent is a type of property right that excludes others
from conducting a particular activity within a government defined
market space for a duration of time (e.g. 21 years in the USA).
Often ethics only matters if donors have legal means to pursue cases
in the courts or to publically shame violators; however, patenting
raises further very strong state-sovereignty backed legal barriers to
either of these ways of challenging violations. While European patent
offices often have a morality clause, the US Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO) does not care about the provenance of any genetic
samples. The USPTO is empowered by the US Constitution, and
therefore its actions are those of a sovereign state. For example, in
1994, after NIH patent applications using genetic samples from
Aboriginal peoples led to a controversy, the US Commerce Secretary
stated in response to criticism by Aboriginal peoples and NGOs that
the provenance of samples did not matter to the patent examination
process (Mead 2007, p. 34-5). It was only through intensive lobbying
by the Solomon Islands government, Indigenous organizations and
NGOs that the NIH was finally pressured to withdraw patent
applications involving Indigenous people from the Solomon Islands
(Harry and Kanehe 2006; Mead 2007). Similar pressure caused the
NIH to withdraw a patent and a patent application on cell lines from
Indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and Panama respectively
(Harry and Kanehe 2006; Mead 2007).
Ong argues that neoliberalism can be understood as a system of

technologies that are locally and nationally adapted so that areas and
often ethically defined populations can have different and varied
connections to transnational capital accumulation and circulation
22
circuits (Ong 2007). In Taiwan, this adaptation of biotechnology as a

neoliberal form of governing technology is evident in the
implementation of state economic development. This process involves
the transformation of Taiwan’s population into a strategic asset that
will not only provide economic value, but this production of value will
be central to the political economy of health (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert
2010; Munsterhjelm 2013). This transformation is reflected in how the
government has reoriented research funding and passed relevant
legislation to push Taiwanese scientists involved in genetic research
to produce commercial products (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010;
Munsterhjelm 2013).
There is a strong racial differentiation in how settlers and Aborigines

have been incorporated into this biotechnology development
(Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010; Munsterhjelm, 2013). Taiwan
Aborigines have far lower socioeconomic status and are subject to
systemic racism in Taiwan, like other settler-dominated states that are
successors to earlier colonial governments. While Aborigines have
made extensive progress in their political rights under Taiwan’s
democratization since the 1980s, income inequality remains quite
severe and today over 60% of Aboriginal households are in the
bottom quintile of income (Council of Indigenous Peoples 2011).
Today Aborigines are affected by a host of various serious public
health issues including high rates of suicide, alcoholism, diabetes,
gout, and preventable diseases such as tuberculosis, which contribute
to life expectancies that are on average over ten years shorter than
Chinese settlers (Wen et al 2004). Central to these efforts is the
integration of scientific research and the national health care system
(which covers 99 per cent of the population) with biotechnological
industrial development strategies (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert 2010; Tai
and Chiou, 2008). The neoliberal orientation of this project has tended
to emphasize and reproduce existing settler stereotypes of Taiwan
Aborigines as Other, in part through reference to the importance of
ethnic differences in reactions to medicine and related concepts of
ethnicity in shaping the individualized delivery of medical care (Tai
and Chiou 2008; Tsai 2010). Modelled on the UK Biobank, the Taiwan
Biobank is to become a 200,000-sample project that is representative
of the country’s population. The Biobank reproduces Taiwan’s major
ethic/racial categories: Mainlander (post-WWII refugees and
immigrants from China), long-term settlers groups of Hoklo (originally
from Fujian province in China) and Hakkanese (a Chinese minority
group), and Aborigines (who are further subdivided into some 14
officially recognized and additional unrecognized peoples) (Tsai YY
2010).
In drafting plans for the Biobank during the mid-2000s, the planners
also failed to consult with Aboriginal peoples. This led to a major
dispute in 2006 in what Aboriginal and human rights activists termed a
violation of Taiwan’s Indigenous Peoples Basic Law, particularly
Section 21 which requires consultations with Aboriginal peoples on
any scientific research involving them (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert
2010; Tai and Chiou 2008; Tsai YY 2010). In addition to arguments
23
that the Biobank would improve Taiwan’s health (including that of

Aborigines), one of the key arguments used by its proponents was
that these informed consent concerns created unnecessary barriers to
Taiwan’s economic development, which would endanger the country’s
ability to compete with other Asian countries (e.g. Chen and Shen
2006a, 2006b). These disputes have led to extensive consultations
over the last several years to try to develop new protocols and
systems of informed consent for Aboriginal peoples’ participation in
the Taiwan Biobank. As a result, the implementation of the Biobank
has been delayed.
The attempted imposition of intellectual property rights based on

research involving Indigenous peoples was central to two recent
controversial patent application cases in Taiwan involving over 1500
Atayal Aborigines.iv During the period 2003 to 2010, the prominent
researcher on Taiwan Aboriginal health, Ko Ying-chin and a number
of his colleagues filed a series of Taiwan and US patent applications
for gout and hyperuricemia related genetic tests. These tests would
assess the risk of individuals developing gout based upon familial
associations (Ko and Cheng 2005a, 2005b). The first of these patent
applications was rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office in
2007 (Kapushoc 2007). A second US patent application (Ko and Tsai
2009a, 2009b) led to Ko coming under pressure from Aboriginal
groups, Taiwan human rights organizations and international NGOs
(Taiwan Indigenous Television 2009). When confronted over these
violations, Ko argued knowledge about gout was ‘Taiwan’s gift to the
world’ that benefited humanity and failing to investigate it would also
interfere with Taiwan Aboriginal peoples’ health and welfare (Taiwan
Indigenous Television 2009). In a December 4 2009 Taiwan
Aboriginal News Weekly Magazine report, the news reporter Watan
Baser (who is a Sediq Aborigine) questioned Ko about his failure to
obtain consent to file the patent applications. Ko responded that no
country, including Taiwan, had laws that required such consent
(Taiwan Indigenous Television 2009). Later in January 2010, Ko said
that he would withdraw the patent application (Taiwan Biobank 2010).
However, it was only after a series of stories on the case appeared in
March 2010 in the United Daily News, one of Taiwan’s major daily
newspapers, which focused national attention and brought extensive
public condemnation by Aboriginal groups and human rights
organizations, that Ko’s law firm quickly filed the documents
withdrawing the US patent application (Central News Agency 2010;
Munsterhjelm 2013).
Taiwan’s own marginalized international diplomatic position (due to

most countries recognizing People’s Republic of China sovereignty
claims over Taiwan) became a factor in a 2011 controversy.
Apparently undeterred by the above March 2010 public controversy,
Ko and his colleagues continued with another patent application (Ko
2010a, 2010b). In June 2010, they filed a US patent application that
added further data to an existing gout related diagnostic test patent
application by including single nucleotide polymorphism data from not
only over 1500 Atayal Aborigines but also additional data from 192
24
Solomon Islanders (Ko et al 2010a, 2010b). These applications

eventually led to another major controversy, this time in both Taiwan
and the Solomon Islands in which the Solomon Islands ambassador
to Taiwan and a Solomon Islands Indigenous peoples’ NGO became
involved. The Solomon Islands is one of only 23 countries in the world
that formally recognize Taiwan diplomatically, and Taiwan’s diplomatic
relations with small Pacific island nations are under particular
pressure from the People’s Republic of China, so the Taiwan
government is extremely sensitive to any potential problems. Ko’s
original 2006 authorization from the Solomon Islands government was
strictly for medical research and did not cover any form of
commercialization (Dr. Cedric Alependava, e-mail, March 9 2011). In
a March 18 2011 e-mail to the ambassador of the Solomon Islands,
Ko apologized for his errors and said he hoped they would not
adversely affect Taiwan-Solomon Islands diplomatic relations; he also
stated he would withdraw the patent application, which he did in April
2011. Later, he returned some 800 samples from Solomon Islanders
that he had originally collected in 2006 (Tsai D, 2011; March 18 2011
and May 3 2011 e-mails from Ko to Victor Ngele, Solomon Islands
Ambassador to Taiwan).
It appears that the Taiwan state revoked those powers that had been
delegated to Ko to represent Taiwan internationally in its relations with
the Solomon Islands. In both of these cases, Ko withdrew the patents
under public and Taiwan and Solomon Islands government pressure.
However, had he refused there would have been no legal recourse for
the Solomon Islanders or the Atayal Aborigines to directly challenge
the US patent applications or the Taiwan patent applications, for
neither countries’ patent examination procedure considers the
provenance of genetic samples used in applications. For within the
global assemblages of these patent applications, Ko would have still
been able to represent the Atayal Aborigines and Solomon Islanders.
Discussion
The equality of legal rights that underlies Rose’s formulations in the

political economy of hope’s P2-P4-P8 would seem to imply that
scientists would face major consequences such as incarceration for
fraud. However, on the contrary, scientists and institutions can violate
Indigenous rights with impunity, because they face little or no
significant consequences. This indicates that scientists view
Aboriginal peoples to be within the zones P1-P3-P7, in which
paternalistic scientists themselves can and do decide on Aboriginal
peoples’ legal rights and obligations. Ko may have been publicly
shamed, but he has faced no professional disciplinary measures, nor
any legal actions. Under authoritarian liberalism, ethics only matters to
the extent that donors or their representatives are able to mobilize
networks to assert rights or pressure institutions and scientists, and
thereby gain some effective agency within the polis. In short, donors’
rights are not respected by default.
25
There is now an extensive body of scholarship, guidelines, and

international agreements on collective informed consent that seeks to
deal with the hierarchies of power inherent in genetic research
involving Indigenous peoples.v These have taken various forms. For
example, in response to the Human Genome Diversity Project and
biopiracy cases of the 1990s, in 2000, the Indigenous Peoples’
Council on Biocolonialism drafted a model ordinance called the
Indigenous Research Protection Act protocol for Aboriginal peoples to
use in genetic research (Indigenous Peoples’ Council on
Biocolonialism 2000). One practice that came out of the controversial
case of the sampling of 883 Nuu-chah-nulth people in Canada by
Richard Ward (which Ward eventually parlayed into a prestigious
Oxford University position) is called ‘DNA on loan’ in which Indigenous
peoples retain ownership over the samples and control the use of any
research findings (Arbour and Cook 2006).vi This concept has become
the default policy position of the Canadian Institute of Health
Research (Reardon and TallBear 2012). In Taiwan, the government in
response to the Ko patent application controversies and other
violations, finally passed legislation entitled the Human Research
Subjects Act which includes fines of up to 1 million Taiwan dollars
(around US$30,000) and research funding bans for violations of
research ethics including informed consent (Human Research
Subjects Act 2011; Shih HC 2011). This legislation includes a special
provision requiring researchers not only gain collective informed
consent from involved Aboriginal communities, but also these
communities will retain a veto over any publication or circulation of the
research findings and the option of withdrawing at any time (Human
Research Subjects Act 2011; Shih HC 2011). In these examples, what
we find is that research abuses have been severe enough to require
extensive lobbying by affected Aboriginal peoples and human rights
groups to push governments towards legislation covering abusive
practices in research. This highlights the continuing significance of the
state and the sovereignty/legal axis in genetic research. It also
highlights what has been the de facto exercise of sovereign powers by
genetic researchers in the legal voids that emerge in the wake of
technological advances. These situations challenge Rose’s concept of
populations as biosocialities being by default respected within
advanced liberal democracies. Rather, what we find is that scientists
in advanced liberal democracies readily engage in authoritarian liberal
practices in genetic research.
There are important and growing systemic pressures to commit

research violations. First, complying with open-ended long-term
informed consent conditions requires extensive organizing and
resources and thereby represents significant costs to researchers
(Munsterhjelm and Gilbert, 2010). Hence, there is an incentive to
minimize such costs. As well, researchers have expressed frustration
with extended informed consent concepts as ‘censorship’ because it
allows involved Indigenous peoples a type of veto over the publication
and dissemination of research findings, and the option of withdrawing
from research at any time (e.g. Dalton 2004). This places the
researchers’ extensive investments of time and resources at risk,
26
since open-ended Aboriginal informed consent introduces political

uncertainty into researchers’ assemblages (Munsterhjelm and Gilbert,
2010). Austerity related cuts to research funding combined with the
competitive pressure to publish or perish mean that such extended
compliance can be a disadvantage in the marketplace for knowledge.
Furthermore, there is the increasing emphasis upon research having
commercial applications, which shapes the funding application
process, the research process, and subsequent usage. Given these
pressures, there are strong incentives for genetic researchers to
interpret available legal regulations and ethical concepts in ways that
derogate Aboriginal peoples’ rights and dignity. These interpretations
are generally couched in terms of the progress of scientific knowledge
and underlying mythical concepts of curing disease and
understanding human origins, or economic policies like advancing
national biotechnology development.
The political economy of hope involves a nearly exclusive focus upon

the processes encompassed by P2-P4-P8 with the complementary
deixis of biopolitics as make-live and law as let live. The state may no
longer be the container within which the population of the nation is to
be biopolitically optimized through various eugenics programs, but the
state remains critical in the legal and sovereign aspects of genetic
research assemblages, particularly through its delegation of
sovereignty and attendant legal protections and capacities to genetic
researchers. What we find in effect is that some laws, such as
patenting, can protect genetic researchers against Aboriginal claims,
such that researchers’ ability to represent Aboriginal peoples within
P2-P4-P8 rests on their ability to exclude Aboriginal claims from this
zone, a form of what Agamben (1998) terms inclusive-exclusion.
Biotechnology development considerations are paramount and can
trump Aboriginal peoples’ and others’ legal and ethical claims.
Such hierarchies of commerce over donors were evident early on in

the 1990 Moore vs. the Regents of UCLA decision in which the
California Supreme Court rejected the plaintiff John Moore’s claim
over cancerous tissue from his body that his doctor had patented
without his knowledge. In its reasoning, the court stated that in
addition to impeding biomedical research, there were then some 350
biotechnology firms in the USA and donors’ rights over samples would
unnecessarily complicate the commercial development of
biotechnology (Moore v. the Regents 1990). This evaluation placed
property and capital related rights above the rights of donors, with
informed consent violations being considered little more than an issue
of contract violations under civil law, so genetic researchers are
effectively given legal protection to cheat.vii
One of the key problems of rendering such informed consent

violations and other types of offenses committed by genetic
researchers as matters of contract law is that it requires involved
Aboriginal peoples to first gather the necessary legal resources to
fight the battle in the courts. This restricts the ability of affected
27
Aboriginal peoples to engage in legal action, by limiting it to those who

are able to mobilize such large amounts of resources and are able to
gain access to the courts. The Havasupai were able to in part
because they received contributions from other Aboriginal peoples
who had revenues from gaming facilities. The 2004 Nature editorial
argued this litigation was an unnecessary politicization of genetic
research, which interfered with genetic research involving Aboriginal
peoples. The implicit norm here is that Aboriginal people have to put
up with such research violations when they happen or else they will
lose access to the benefits of such medical research.
Genetic researchers’ violations involve, in effect, a sort of enactment

of sovereign violence, in the sense that though these research
scientists have engaged in severe violations of Aboriginal peoples’
rights and dignity, they face no legal repercussions of any
significance. While being publicly shamed, they nonetheless have
been able to get away without any legal penalty, despite committing
serious mass violations of Aboriginal peoples’ rights and dignity.
Insulated by an array of institutional and legal barriers, genetic
researchers often operate ahead of the law in a legal void. So in the
effective absence of law, they exercise prerogative power based on a
claim to act on behalf of the common good. By virtue of their
mediating positions in organizing assemblages that span settler state
government and private agencies, transnational biotechnology, and
Aboriginal peoples, these scientists are able to arrogate sovereign
functions, and thereby realize benefits through shaping and restricting
involved Aboriginal peoples’ rights and obligations.
Conclusion
The underlying mythos and theological base for contemporary genetic

research has shifted to a more universal set of organizing
metanarratives: curing disease and understanding human origins.
Therefore, in the assemblages that make up genetics research, these
mythological values underpin the actions of scientists. This becomes
apparent in these disputes, particularly how genetic researchers
defend the legitimacy of their actions by dismissing Aboriginal
peoples’ criticisms as ‘hypersensitive,’ even positing Aboriginal
peoples’ objections as threats to their own health or a violation of their
supposed obligation to assist scientists in curing disease on behalf of
humanity. Fanon’s reinterpretation of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic in
the context of colonialism is useful. In Hegel’s formulation, there is a
type of reciprocity in which the master seeks and requires recognition
from the slave, however Fanon asserts:
I hope I have shown that here the master differs basically from the
master described by Hegel. For Hegel there is reciprocity; here the
master laughs at the consciousness of the slave. What he wants
from the slave is not recognition but work. (Fanon 1986, p. 220)
In effect, in these cases, involved genetic researchers are laughing at

the consciousness of affected Indigenous peoples, thereby excluding
28
them from the polis. For the involved scientists want to be able to
utilize the samples in order to act as spokespeople for the Indigenous
people. When affected Indigenous people protest, withdraw their
consent and seek to reclaim control over how genetic researchers
represent them, in these cases genetic researchers have rejected
these efforts, saying they serve the higher cause of humanity, and so
should Indigenous peoples. In this way, scientists claim their
enrolment of Aboriginal peoples as samples is done on behalf of and
in pursuit of the quest given to the scientists by the universal macro
actor of humanity. While Rose’s analysis sheds much light on
contemporary biopower, his neglect of racism in authoritarian liberal
practices of genetic research requires further consideration.
Mark Munsterhjelm teaches sociology at the University of

Windsor. His current research focuses on the enactment of
racism, sovereignty and biopolitics in transnational assemblages
of genetic research and biotechnology development involving
Indigenous peoples in Taiwan, the Pacific, and the Americas. He
can be reached at: mark.munsterhjelm[“at” symbol]gmail.com.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their

comments. As well, portions of this research were funded by a
Canadian Institute of Health Research grant ‘Justice for All’ (950-
202186).
Notes
i
While there are extensive debates over the use of these terms, in this paper
I will use the terms Indigenous and Aboriginal interchangeably.
ii
There is already an extensive body of research and analysis on the Human
Genome Diversity Project controversy of the mid-1990s. Therefore, I have
chosen not to address the extensive literature on HGDP in this article.
Rather, I will consider other more recent or lesser-known cases.
iii
Rose (2007) contains a chapter entitled “The Biology of Control” about
debates over MAO-A and other genes in contemporary criminology.
However, the chapter does not consider the issues of race and racism.

iv
Professional disclosure: During my research, I found the US patent
applications and I was involved in organizing the efforts that led to the
withdrawal of two US patent applications and Taiwan patent applications in
2009-2010 and 2011.
v
I will not deal with the extensive literature on Access and Benefit Sharing,
which has been extremely controversial. ABS has been criticized as little
more than a legal regime to ensure access by capital to Indigenous peoples’
29
resources. For a critique please see Harry and Kanahe’s ‘The BS in access
and benefit sharing (ABS): Critical questions for Indigenous peoples’ (2005).
vi
In the early 1980s, Richard Ward, then a population geneticist at the
University of British Columbia (UBC), took samples from 883 Nuu-chah-nulth
Aboriginal people on Vancouver Island as part of a $330,000 Canadian
government-funded arthritis study (Wiwchar 2004). Ward promised to give
the Nuu-chah-nulth results back, but never did. Instead, after the arthritis
research on the samples failed to yield any results, he continued to use the
Nuu-chah-nulth samples. He left UBC and took the samples with him to the
University of Utah and then to Oxford University where they were used for
human origins research and other studies. These uses violated the original
informed consent, which stated the samples would only be used for arthritis
research (Wiwchar 2004). These samples were eventually returned to the
Nuu-chah-nulth in 2004 after years of lobbying, but only after Ward suddenly
died of a heart attack in 2003 (Wiwchar 2004).
vii
The researchers’ counter-argument is that this would send a chill through
the research community, such as was made by various researchers when
the Havasupai case gained attention in the US (e.g. Nature 2004).
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The Political Economy of Hope and Authoritarian Liberalism in Genetic

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VOLUME 12 NUMBER 1, 2013

The Political Economy of Hope and Authoritarian

populations (exemplified by the Nazi regime), no longer has any role

A very significant problem arises in Rose’s analysis of race in

In this paper, I will counterpoint Rose’s work by considering several

Liberalism rests on a contradiction in which the exercise of freedom is

Sovereignty and Biopolitics

In the following section, I will show how imposition of distinctions

In the final lecture in Society Must Be Defended (2003), Foucault

And I think that one of the greatest transformations political right

In this passage, Foucault recognizes how the sovereign enactment,

Foucault’s definition of sovereignty as take-life and law as let-live,

A central point that tis prior to the treatment towards life.

This mapping allows us to conceptualize further the potential range of

Figure 1: Semiotic Square of Sovereignty and Biopolitics.

Foucault’s original formulation considers the opposition between P1

which is equivalent to let-die (‘let’ is an active verb) or ‘disallow it to the

Foucault addressed this apparent paradox at the centre of the

Figure 2: Metaterms of sovereignty and biopolitics.

The metaterms are combinations of P1, P2, P3, and P4:

P5: (P1 + P2): The combination of sovereignty as take-life and

P6: (P3 + P4): This position is the combination of not-let-die/not-let-

P7 (P1 + P3): take-life/let-die is an intensified area of death. This

P8 (P2 + P4): Make-live/not-take-life is an intensified zone of life that

P9 (P1 + P4): Make-live/not-let-live is a boundary or zone of transition

P10 (P2 + P3): Make-live/let-die is a boundary or zone of transition

Mapping the Political Economy of Hope

In The Politics of Life Itself, Rose charts out what he terms a

The ethos of hope links together different actors – actual or

This formulation involves a high degree of inclusion within the polis of

The shift from the institutionalized racism of eugenics involves moving

In support of this formulation, Rose delineates a strong distinction

Contemporary biopolitics in advanced liberal polities does not take

As the semiotic square diagrams illustrate above, letting die (P3) is

If the power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign

Hence, racism is central to the interweaving of biopower and

However, Rose considers that racist discrimination in contemporary

quotes one of the arguments by the influential population geneticist L.

While there were many critics of this project, by 1991 it was

Rose uses the example of an African-American genetic database that

And, in advanced liberal democracies at least, the biopolitics of

In this view, genetic identities that integrate race can no longer be

Rose mentions the ways in which Native American identity is

Inescapably, that is to say, the generation and diffusion of genomic

Rose does not investigate and analyse genetic research involving

Rose marginalizes the importance of how genetic researchers

1. He does not discuss how genetic researchers who do the molecular

2. Genetic researchers view genes as causal agents, molecular

Authoritarian Liberalism in Advanced Liberal Polities

In this second part of the article, I will consider cases involving

Aboriginal peoples and the State of Nature

During the early and mid-20th century, eugenics as a discourse,

Rose argues that the contemporary role of race in genetic concepts of

Beginning in the 1980s, Aboriginal peoples were quickly redesignated

Alcoholism carries a powerful stigma and contributes to high levels of

journals began to speculate upon genetic factors in the mid-1980s, as

In summary, the difference in prevalence of rates of alcoholism in

Because of such research, by the late 1990s, differences in

In Taiwan, this genetic determinism contributed to settlers’ negative