Abstract
From the new imperialism of the second half of the nineteenth century to the biocolonialism at the beginning of the twentieth century, expansionist policies went from annexing land to annexing life. Arguing that the panacea of human ailments professed to be achievable by unlimited expansion into the molecular space of human life comes with a yet unrecognized prize, the dynamics of this historical shift is analyzed as a driving force out of political institutional control. By reconnecting the knowledge-based economy, industrial biology, and biocolonialism into a dynamic complex, the purpose of this chapter is to contextualize postgenomic research biobanking and to bring out its destructive propensity to topple existing moral and political institutions.
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Karlsen, J.R., Strand, R. (2009). Annexation of Life: The Biopolitics of Industrial Biology. In: Solbakk, J., Holm, S., Hofmann, B. (eds) The Ethics of Research Biobanking. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93872-1_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93872-1_20
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