Citizens in the commons: Blood and genetics in the making of the civic

Abstract

This essay is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with the Indian community in Houston, as part of a National Institutes of Health and the National Human Genome Research Institute-sponsored ethics study and sample collection initiative entitled 'Indian and Hindu Perspectives on Genetic Variation Research'. Taking a cue from my Indian interlocutors who largely support and readily respond to such initiatives on the grounds that they will undoubtedly serve 'humanity' and the common good, I explore notions of the commons that are created in the process of soliciting blood for genetic research. How does blood become the stuff of which a civic discourse is made? How do idealistic individual appeals to donate blood, ethics research protocols, open-source databases, debates on approaches to genetic research, patents and Intellectual Property regulations, markets and the nation-state itself variously engage, limit or further ideas of the common good? Moving much as my interlocutors do, between India and the USA, I explore the nature of the commons that is both imagined and pragmatically reckoned in both local and global diasporic contexts. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.