Biocrossing heterotopia: Revisiting contemporary stem cell research and therapy in India

Abstract

The fraught and contested terrain of stem cell research and therapies is an undulating landscape of utopias and dystopias. Extending the tropic notion of ‘biocrossing’ (Bharadwaj 2008), the chapter articulates the faint traces of utopic and dystopic logics underscoring these ‘crossings’ and the evolving biography of a contested terrain this (re)scripts. The chapter engages with ethnographic immersion into the lives of physicians, researchers, policymakers, and patients to conceptualize evolving scenarios that remain divergent and yet the source of emergent but shifting utopias and dystopias that often get experienced as a heterotopia.