Animal Material and Biomedical Globalization. Sociology of the Pharmaceutical Uses of Animal Life in the Indian Ocean – ANIPHARM

The project relies on a series of case studies, analysed through interviews and ethnographic work: the chimpanzees sold by Mauritius for experimentation, the gelatine of porcine or bovine origin produced in South Africa to be used in the manufacture of medicines, donkey skin produced in Kenya and used by traditional Chinese medicine, pangolin scales poached in India and Sri Lanka to feed the markets of Southeast Asia. This project is interdisciplinary: anchored above all in social studies of science, it mobilizes tools from different research streams: pharmaceutical studies, animal studies, the socio-anthropology of markets, studies of globalization «from below«.

in progress

in progress

in progress

The pharmaceutical industry uses animal life or animal-based materials at different stages of innovation and manufacturing. This is the case, for example, with mice and chimpanzees used as guinea pigs during the innovation phase, or with the fat of porcine or bovine origin used in the manufacture of the gelatin which coats medicinal capsules. This phenomenon has been little studied by the social sciences. These have documented animal experimentation, particularly in the context of a reflection on experimental ethics; they paid less attention to the industrial uses of animal life during the pharmaceutical production process; and so far they have not proposed a general explanation of the uses of animal life in the global context of the pharmaceutical industry and its market dynamics, simultaneously covering the challenges of innovation and production.

To remedy this lack, the ANIPHARM project analyzes the "pharmaceutical uses of animal life" by mapping them. It submits the hypothesis that such uses reflect a particular articulation of the field of life sciences with the institutions of market globalization; they highlight some mechanisms of biomedical globalization. The first of these mechanisms is the renewal of modes of "commodification" (transformation in the commodity state) of animal life. The second is the crucial - and often hidden - role played in the biomedical markets by precarious categories of social actors (fishermen, breeders, poachers, for example). The third is the persistence of unequal exchange between developed and "developing" nations in globalized biomedical markets: developing countries in particular supplying raw materials, sometimes to the detriment of their own needs (eg food), to contribute to make medicines that people in these countries do not always have access to.

The project relies on a series of case studies, analyzed through interviews and ethnographic work: the chimpanzees sold by Mauritius for experimentation, the gelatin of porcine or bovine origin produced in South Africa to be used in the manufacture of medicines, donkey skin produced in Kenya and used by traditional Chinese medicine, pangolin scales poached in India and Sri Lanka to feed the markets of Southeast Asia. This project is interdisciplinary: coordinated by a sociologist, it also associates two foreign partner teams, an anthropologist and an economist. Anchored above all in social studies of science, it mobilizes tools from different research streams: pharmaceutical studies, animal studies, the socio-anthropology of markets, studies of globalization "from below".

Finally, the contribution of the project concerns several aspects. At the analytical level, it aims at better explaining the convergence between scientific, technical and market logics in globalized biomedical markets. In addition, this project contributes to a more general survey program on "global technoscientific markets" - which forms the coordinator's overall research program. Finally, on the organizational level, the project allows both to structure the international research network in which the coordinator is part, and to consolidate his participation within his laboratory and his French research network.