Frugality with Value: Biomarkers, Food Assetization and the making of Entrepreneurial Science
Stathis Arapostathis, Assoc. Prof., Philosophy & History of Science Dept., National & Kapodistrian University of Athens [remote presentation]
Saturday, 28 October 2023, 4:15 PM – 5:45 PM
The paper is a study of a toxicological and biochemistry lab in a peripheral university of Greece from 1999 to the present day. The aim is to understand the way antioxidants have been introduced by the Biochemistry laboratory of the University of Thessaly to question dominant techno-solutionism that stresses the importance of pharmaceuticals to secure healthy conditions at a personal and societal level. The research questions the paper addresses are the following: How antioxidants have become key actors to build the lab’s visionary understanding of the interaction of genes and nutrition? How have biochemistry and biotechnology promoted alternatives to dominant understandings of nutrition and its role in healthy living? How antioxidants became agents for the promotion of a new model of political economy of knowledge that reproduces knowledge capitalism at regional level. The paper argues that antioxidants have become the immutable mobiles for the lab and its leader to promote the vision of a personalized medicine that is based on well-structured nutrition and more specifically on intermittent fasting, new biometrics and the use of local natural resources and products. The process of assetization of food products and the increasing emphasis on the importance of new biomarkers and valorization of agriculture products based on them have introduced a new aspect of the entrepreneurial university that contributes beyond the mere commodification of products. The paper contributes a sociological analysis of a lab that deconstructs the center-periphery distinction and unravels the enactment of a type of regional capitalism where the surplus value of the local natural resources has been co-produced with new roles for scientists in the neoliberal regime of knowledge making. The paper is based on fieldwork in the lab that involved interviews with the research team, observations, analysis of reports and published articles.
