10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17406
Biobanks are crucial institutions in the infrastructure of contemporary life sciences. They depend on the participation of donors who give tissues and data. Through their participation, donors can build identities and form biosociality. Biobanks are key sites in the current bioeconomy, that enable the generation of value from those tissues and bioinformation, transformed into assets or commodities. We define biobanks as hybrid zones of heterogeneous practices that blur the boundaries between institutional sectors and ways of producing economic values. On that basis we introduce a novel empirical, realist approach to the analysis of biobanking economies, explaining the different economic and social biovalues that emerge from the practices of valuing and interacting between the researchers, biobank staff and donor participants in specific banking activities. We discuss why STS studies on biobanking should explore the concrete practices through which multiple biovalues as well as biosocialities are produced simultaneously and in configurations of mutual interdependence.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17406
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Christine Hauskeller
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
practices of valuing
Assets, Commodities and Biosocialities. Multiple Biovalues in Hybrid Biobanking Practices
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
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Editorial
2019-01-31
2023-06-25
2019-01-31
2023-08-31
5-31
TS
Christine Hauskeller
2018
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17406
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University of Exeter
2038-3460
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practices of valuing
en
31
Assets, Commodities and Biosocialities. Multiple Biovalues in Hybrid Biobanking Practices
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17406/16264
9
                                                                                Introduction
                                                                                           5




Assets, Commodities and Biosocialities
Multiple Biovalues in Hybrid Biobanking Practices

          Lorenzo Beltrame                                 Christine Hauskeller
                 University of Trento                          University of Exeter



    Abstract: Biobanks are crucial institutions in the infrastructure of contem-
    porary life sciences. They depend on the participation of donors who give
    tissues and data. Through their participation, donors can build identities and
    form biosociality. Biobanks are key sites in the current bioeconomy, that en-
    able the generation of value from those tissues and bioinformation, trans-
    formed into assets or commodities. We define biobanks as hybrid zones of
    heterogeneous practices that blur the boundaries between institutional sec-
    tors and ways of producing economic values. On that basis we introduce a
    novel empirical, realist approach to the analysis of biobanking economies,
    explaining the different economic and social biovalues that emerge from the
    practices of valuing and interacting between the researchers, biobank staff
    and donor participants in specific banking activities. We discuss why STS
    studies on biobanking should explore the concrete practices through which
    multiple biovalues as well as biosocialities are produced simultaneously and in
    configurations of mutual interdependence.

    Keywords: biobank; biovalues; bioeconomy; biosociality; participants’ identi-
    ty; practices of valuing.

    Corresponding author: Lorenzo Beltrame, Department of Sociology and
    Social Research, Via Verdi 26, 38122 Trento, Italy. Email: lorenzo.beltrame@
    unitn.it




1. Introduction

    In 2010 Robert Mitchell and Catherine Waldby published an article in
which they explored national population-based biobanks as sites of
biovalue production. Waldby had previously defined biovalue as the yield
of vitality produced by the biotechnical reformulation of living processes
(Waldby 2002, 310). In contrast to existing bioethical analyses of bi-
obanks and citizens’ participation and issues of informed consent, owner-
ship, or confidentiality, Mitchell and Waldby (2010) emphasized the role
of biobanks in the global bioeconomy. They placed the role of participant
TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
9 (2) pp. 5-31 – ISSN 2038–3460
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6                                                            Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

involvement as the first ring in a value chain, which transforms donated
tissues and the related bioinformation into commodities that generate
“surpluses of both profit and health” (Mitchell and Waldby 2010, 333).
Participation in biobanking was redefined as a form of clinical labour: i.e.
“regularized, embodied work that members of the national population
are expected to perform in their role as biobank participants” (Mitchell
and Waldby 2010, 334). From this angle, the article discussed the emerg-
ing relationships between the biopolitics of donor involvement and the
generation of biocapital, asking how “genetic information, biological
samples, and patient experience” (Mitchell and Waldby 2010, 333) are
mobilized through public sector research institutions, medical charities,
small and medium biotech enterprises and big pharmaceutical companies.
The focus lay on the resulting relationships of production in this area of
the modern bioeconomy. Other perspectives on donor involvement in bi-
obanking enterprises were put to one side, since for Mitchell and Waldby
(2010, 336): “characterizing population involvement in biobanks primari-
ly in civil terms makes it difficult to analyze the economic role played by
populations”.
    The aim of this Special Issue is to re-integrate the analysis of economic
biovalue production and reflections on biobanks as sites of identity and
sociality production in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The need
for this integration arises from the current landscape of biobanks itself
and how participants relate to them. Our enquires into the bioeconomy
of umbilical cord blood banking (Hauskeller and Beltrame 2016a; 2016b)
have shown that multiplex and often hybrid zones of biovalue production
emerge from peculiar banking configurations. Such configurations are the
outcome of several interlocking elements – they include the biomaterials,
technologies, laboratory practices, and regulations involved, but also eco-
nomic interests, ethical values, as well as participants’ social and personal
identities and understandings of community. Participation in biobanking
is central to the complex emerging bioeconomies and the related hetero-
geneous processes of valuation. Ethical, social and identity practices can-
not be separated from the processes of economic biovalue creation. They
are entangled in and take multifaceted shapes in the diverse banking
models and configurations that have been created. Our notion of hybridi-
ty is consistent with some novel approaches in valuation studies (Muniesa
2011; Helgesson and Muniesa 2013), where rigid categories of institu-
tional regimes of value production have been substituted by the notion of
practices of valuing – i.e. valuing as something people do (Heuts and Mol
2013) – related to multiple systems of worth and moral justification
(Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Hybrid biobanking configurations blur
the boundaries between institutional sectors and economic forms of pro-
duction and circulation. Therefore analytical focus should be on the het-
erogeneous practices enacted by actors operating in biobanks configura-
tions.
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                      7
    This Special Issue arose from our invitation to STS colleagues to en-
gage in the endeavour to decipher this entanglement of citizens’ participa-
tion and value creation in different biobank configurations. First in a spe-
cial track during the 2016 4S/EASST joint conference in Barcelona –
“Biobanks: the interdependence between forms of biovalue creation and
donor participation” - and in this Special Issue of Tecnoscienza. We
asked to address the following questions: a) How do different forms of
involvements of patients, citizens and other non-expert actors shape bio-
bank configurations? b) How are subjectivities and collective identities
shaped by the involvement in biobanking activities? c) How are these
varying forms of biosocial participation linked to the production of
biovalue, and which kinds of biovalues are generated?
    The articles collated engage with these questions by exploring diverse
biobanking configurations and situations. They show that individuals’ de-
cisions to participate and how are influenced by, and in turn affect, the
ways in which different kinds of biobanks are set up and function. Bank-
ing arrangements and forms of participation are mutually constitutive,
and they have to be studied as generative of the condition of possibility
and development for the constitution of identities and biosociality and for
the production of economic biovalue.
    The concept we propose here expands the pioneering work of Mitchell
and Waldby on the political economy of biobanks and the related ntions
of biovalue and clinical labour as well as on the sociological and STS
works on biosociality and citizenship. The aim is to apply these concepts
to reflect the contemporary variety of biobanking practices and enlarge
the conceptual scope through the problematization of biovalue genera-
tion. We do so along three interconnected lines of argument outlined be-
low and supported empirically and from diverse angles in the individual
articles. In section two of this introduction we clarify first the importance
of the distinctions between tissues biobanks and bioinformation biobanks
and between clinical and research biobanks. While these distinctions are
often used for analytic reasons, the concrete forms they take in practice
have important consequences for the dynamics investigated in the articles
in the Special Issue. In section three we discuss how the several configu-
rations and organizational arrangements of biobanks raise questions of
ethical and regulatory governance. In doing so they become socially rele-
vant, affecting practices of subjectivity and identity formation and, conse-
quently, the creation of economic and commercial value as well. In sec-
tion four we examine the formation processes of identities and subjectivi-
ties, discussing some operative notions deployed in STS that analytically
underpin the analysis of these processes. These concepts and analyses in-
sert the multiplicity of values (ethical, social and identitary) involved in
participation into the debate on the political economy of biobanking. In
section five, we critically discuss the political economy of biovalue pro-
duction in biobanking, arguing that the focus on actual practices of valu-
ing in hybrid economic spaces shows that the diverse forms of generating
8                                                            Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

economic value confound the rigid oppositions often used in the STS lit-
erature. The oppositions between commodification versus assetization as
well as between exploitation of clinical labour versus accumulation by
dispossession don't hold in view of contemporary practices of biobank-
ing. Finally, in section six, we articulate a theory of the interdependence
and co-constitution of diverse biovalues that can inform STS study de-
signs to investigate practices and institutions in the contemporary bioe-
conomy.
    The analytical framework we have developed and the relevance of
which is supported by the articles below, does not avoid the theories in
political economy or sociology of identity, but begins with open concepts
of biovalue(s), biosociality and bioeconomy. This provides scope for an
empirical realist approach to adjust what these notions refer to and their
conceptual role in the study of local biobanking practices.


2. Tissues and Bioinformation in Clinical and Research
   Biobanking

    Biobanks are crucial infrastructures in contemporary biomedicine.
They are collections of biological materials combined with information
(personal medical, genealogical, environmental etc.) attached to the sam-
ples (Gottweis and Petersen 2008, 5). However, they are not as unified a
kind of infrastructure as this definition might suggest. They vary in size,
purpose, methodology and institutional arrangements. Biobanks are het-
erogenous objects (Corrigan and Tutton 2009, 303). One way to bring
some order to this heterogeneity is by distinguishing between tissues bi-
obanks and bioinformation biobanks and then further differentiate these
groups into clinical and research biobanks. We use these analytic clusters
to provide a brief overview on types of biobanking, they do not represent
a register into which the multiple kinds of existing biobanks fit neatly and
without overlap.
    Tissue biobanks are fundamentally repositories of biological materials
that are designed to enable their usability for clinical or for research pur-
poses. But many banks operate in both domains: some umbilical cord
blood banks, for example, provide samples for both transplantation or
stem cell research (Hauskeller and Beltrame 2016a). There is also a class
of tissues biobanks that offer a service of personal banking: that is tissues
storage for future self- or family use, as do private cord blood banks
(Waldby 2006; Santoro 2011) or banks that offer the conservation of en-
dometrial stem cells found in menstrual blood (Fannin 2013). Finally, the
tissues stored can be sold for commercial purposes and for profit (Almel-
ing 2017; Waldby 2015), or can be release for clinical needs following a
logic of public redistribution. Between those types of use several itersec-
tion zones have emerged, which we call hybrid bioeconomies (Hauskeller
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                       9
and Beltrame 2016a). Compared to bioinformation biobanks, these dif-
ferent banking models are characterized by material interests in the tissue
as such, be they clinical, scientific, and/or commercial interests. Medical
information about donors and other bioinformation (e.g. medical history)
are collected to determine the properties of the tissue to realize its future
use-value.
    In bioinformation biobanks the focus lies on the information provid-
ed. Tissues are collected to extract bioinformation that is then correlated
with other information; value (again: scientific, clinical and/or commer-
cial) is generated from the size, the richness and the usability of that in-
formation. Scholars often call these biobanks genetic (or genomic or
DNA) databases, databanks or biolibraries (Hoeyer 2008, 429; Corrigan
and Tutton 2009, 303).
    Gottweis and Petersen (2008, 6) called such banks “population-based
research biobanks”, highlighting that samples and data are taken from
“(parts of) the general population with or without disease”. This denomi-
nator stresses other characteristics of these enterprises: a) they are mainly
oriented toward research; b) they work on populations and, more im-
portantly, c) populations can mean either or both, the general population
and a specific population that carries a specific trait or condition. The
explanatory power of these initiatives is taken to rest in combining ge-
nomic data (extracted from the blood samples collected from a popula-
tion, for instance) with the medical records, genealogical, environmental
and lifestyle information. Also, the research-oriented focus does not ex-
clude future concrete and commercial applications of the findings. The
data are analyzed both for a better scientific understanding of the etiology
of diseases and conditions, and to develop new diagnostic tools (e.g. ge-
netic tests), therapeutics and pharmaceutical products (Tutton 2004;
Lewis 2004; Corrigan and William-Jones 2006).
    The size of dataset collected is often less important than the detail and
quality. Valuable are, depending on the research questions, the genetic
homogeneity of a unique population (the Icelandic case, see e.g. Rose
2001; Pálsson and Rabinow 1999); or a relatively large population about
which exhaustive medical records can be accessed (the Swedish LifeGene
initiative, see Cool 2016); or, finally, a large sample of a multi-ethnic pop-
ulation (as in UK Biobank, see Tutton 2008). The aim of the research af-
fects how homogeneity versus variability can be valued (Tupasela 2016).
Respectively, the notion of “population” varies including so-called genet-
ic isolates or people affected by a specific health condition – in disease-
specific biobanks (see the case Singh presents in this Special Issue).
    In bioinformation biobanks any distinctions between commercially-
oriented activities and research initiatives are even more difficult to draw
out than in tissue biobanks. While the for-profit aim is the reason for the
existence of “direct to consumer genetic testing” companies (Tutton and
Prainsack 2011; Harris et al. 2013), STS scholars have also discussed the
potential commercial implications of population-based biobanking pro-
10                                                             Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

jects (Mitchell and Waldby 2010; Tupasela 2016). Recently, population-
based biobanks have been investigated also as sites for the construction of
collective identities intertwined with the generation of both scientific and
economic value (Tupasela and Snell 2012; Tupasela and Tamminen 2015;
Tupasela et al. 2015; Cañada et al. 2015).
    The scope of biobanking initiatives, the target of their collection strat-
egies, their research or clinical aims shape the processes of identity con-
struction and value generation. The contributions to this special issue dis-
cuss different kinds of biobanking activity. Romero-Bachiller and Santoro
explore different banking practices around a human fluid, human breast
milk, and show how it is differently bio-objectified in different banking
configurations engendering kin-like relations and identities built on nar-
ratives of donation, altruism and gift-giving. Singh discusses a disease-
specific genomic database in which tissues are also used to derive immor-
talized cell lines and induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) that can be
exchanged and used as disease models for research. Wyatt, Cook and
McKevitt analyze a biobanking activity which depends on continuous
long-term engagement of volunteer participants. Bühler, Barazzetti and
Kaufmann explore two different bioinformation biobanks a city-cohort
study oriented toward specific diseases and a general biobank aimed at
the development of personalized medicine. Whereas French, Miller and
Axler discuss the engagement hospitals have in different kinds of bi-
obanking activity.
    The range of different configurations and orientations to tissues
and/or bioinformation addressed highlights the diversity of processes of
biovalue production on the ground. In order to better understand these
processes, the tissue/bioinformation distinction is insufficient. We also
need an explanatory articulation of the contemporary institutional con-
figurations in biobanking.


3. Institutional Configurations

     Gottweis (2008, 24) concluded that biobanks are technologies of gov-
erning life through “collecting, storing, interpreting, and assembling life
in the form of human materials, such as tissue or DNA”. As such, they in-
volve a continuous re-definition of the boundaries between “the scien-
tific/technological, the social, the cultural, and the political” as well as the
“relationships between patients and doctors, between genes and diseases,
scientists and the public, the pharmaceutical industry and medical scienc-
es” (Gottweis 2008, 22). Biobanks are also key sites in the current bioe-
conomy. They enable the transformation of tissues and bioinformation in-
to exchangeable commodities, or assets producing rents through patent-
ing or other financial strategies. We argue that the examination of bi-
obanking should be wider than focusing primarily in a logic of “corpo-
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                     11
ratization and commodification of healthcare and medicine” that results
from the active intervention of private companies in the field of contem-
porary biomedicine (Gottweis 2008, 28).
    One key element of the analytical framework we propose is the hybrid
nature of biobanking economies. Hybrid bioeconomies criss-cross and
overstep distinctions drawn between public and private institutions, re-
distribution and market economy, or commodification and assetization
(Hauskeller and Beltrame 2016a). Hybridity means firstly that organiza-
tional configurations and institutional arrangements cannot be used as
fixed explanatory categories for economic value production. The analyti-
cal focus should be put on the practices of valuation enacted by the in-
volved actors within the peculiar configurations in which they operate.
Secondly, hybridity implies that these practices encompass a complex of
different non-economic values (e.g. scientific reputation, international
collaborations, healthcare benefits, individual and collective identities).
Therefore, the exploration of different organizational and institutional
configurations of biobanking enterprises is not merely a classifying task, it
is a step toward the explanation of the production of multiple biovalues
by enacted valuing practices within these configurations.
    Our perspective contrasts with the three ideal types of institutional
models proposed by Gottweis and Lauss (2011) to capture the range of
bioeconomic configurations:
  1) The entrepreneurial biobank, founded by a commercial company of-
      ten in partnership with state institutions;
  2) the biosocial biobank, an enterprise promoted, funded and some-
      times managed by patient activists’ groups;
  3) the public biobank, established, funded and ruled by state authori-
      ties or by charities and the not-for-profit sector.
    These ideal types of banking arrangement overlook cases of public-
private partnership in biobanking and public biobanking enterprises es-
tablished through licensing agreements with a commercial pharmaceutical
or biomedical company (see Pálsson 2008; Lewis 2004 for a typology of
forms of pharmaceutical companies’ engagement in biobanking activi-
ties). Similarly, the biosocial model forms a hybrid through partnership
with commercial companies. The well-researched cases of PXE Interna-
tional (Novas 2006) or the Association Française contre les Myopathies
(AFM) (Callon and Rabeharisoa 2008; Mayrhofer 2008; 2015) exemplify
biobanking activities that have been initiated, funded and managed by
patient organizations yet have licensing agreements with commercial bio-
tech companies.
    Corrigan and Tutton (2009) offer a more exhaustive list of possible
configurations, organized according to the sources of the biomaterial and
information, the research foci, the actors initiating biobanking activities
and the expectations of these endeavours (see Table 1). However, this
classification excludes both most of the existing tissue biobanks (that
provide or sell tissues for research or clinical treatments) as well as those
12                                                                   Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

commercial enterprises that sell genetic tests directly to the consumer.
Moreover, Corrigan and Tutton (2009, 304) add that:

     many biobanks have been initiated, funded or undertaken by alliances of
     actors, ranging from collaborations between (1) publicly funded universi-
     ties and hospitals; (2) public-private partnerships comprising commercial
     companies; (3) the academic sector and/or medical charities in coopera-
     tion with national and regional governments; (4) pharmaceutical, biotech-
     nology and genomic companies in collaboration with clinical research or-
     ganizations; and (5) disease advocacy organizations in collaboration with
     universities or even pharmaceutical companies.

    It has been observed in recent years that many of these alliances were
not established at the beginning of a biobanking initiative. Collaborations
as well as commercial agreements and deals can be stipulated during the
course of the collection and storage activity. This suggests that the types
proposed by Gottweis and Lauss (2011) do not exist in a pure form, in-
stead complex configurations have been emerging. Mayrhofer and Prain-
sack (2009) have argued that the network structure of collaborating bi-
obanks is increasingly diffuse, and involves more and more partnerships
across the public and private sectors, the domestic and international di-
mension, and the healthcare, research and commercial clusters (see also
Tupasela and Snell 2012).

      Sources           Research Foci                Actors             Expectations
 Population-based      Common, complex      National or regional   Prevention and treat-
 prospective (vo-      diseases             governments            ment of disease
 lounteers from
 the general popu-
 lation)
 Hospital patients     Personalized medi-   Medical charities      Reduction of health-
                       cine                                        care costs
 Patients or other     Cancer research      Pharmaceutical sec-    Speed up drug de-
 volunteers partic-                         tor                    velopment and ap-
 ipating in clinical                                               proval
 trials
                       Orphan and rare      Teaching hospitals     Generate new in-
                       diseases                                    come stream for
                                                                   pharmaceutical sec-
                                                                   tor
                                            Diseases advocacy      Produce ‘personal-
                                            groups                 ized’ drugs for sub-
                                                                   groups or individuals
                                            Biospecimen indu-
                                            stry sector
Table 1 – Varieties of biobanks and their scientific and institutional settings (Cor-
rigan and Tutton 2009, 304).
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                         13
    Studying banking configuration is more than an exercise in arranging
elements according to characteristics for the sake of it and, like all classi-
fication exercises, neither objective nor exhaustive. Yet, given that poli-
cies and ethical discourses on biobanking have mobilized and often rest
their rules and judgments on such classifications, it is necessary to discuss
them and contrast them with developments in the field. Only then can
one observe and analyze the increasing hybridity of biobanking practices
and its implications for the production and social appreciation of the im-
plicit and manifest biovalues.
    Firstly, configurations affect biobanking governance. According to
Gottweis and Petersen (2008, 8), we witness “multi-directional forms of
governance”, where the traditional top-down approach coexists and in-
tersects with bottom-up patterns (biosocial banking model) and with
“horizontal exchanges” between market actors. Mayrhofer and Prainsack
(2009, 75) argue that network configurations involve a form of “govern-
ance emerging out of the field itself”: effective collaboration requires reli-
able standards of data collection and management as well as harmoniza-
tion practices and ethical conduct. These elements produce materially
binding (even if formally non-legal) protocols and guidelines of practice.
Mayrhofer and Prainsack (2009, 70) also note that governmental regula-
tion is not as fast as the progress of scientific activity, instead it is the re-
search activity itself that generates forms of governance, enforcing also
ethical conduct in procuring, processing and using samples and infor-
mation. This implies a shift in the focus from formal institutional ar-
rangements to the concrete social practices and interactions that make bi-
obanking configurations work. Cooperation and the sharing of tissues
and bioinformation require work to embed the activity in the social con-
text (Hoeyer et al. 2017; see also Tupasela and Snell 2012).
    Secondly, institutional configurations have implications for processes
of commercialization and economic value production. Commercialization
is a thorny issue in the debate about ownership of the donated tissues and
bioinformation given to biobanks. The question is how altruistic gift-
giving of participants is transformed into or becomes part of a proprietary
asset and/or commodity (see Hayden 2007). The private sector is inter-
ested in accessing the tissue and bioinformation collections stored in hos-
pitals and public biobanking initiatives for profit-making reasons (Lewis
2004). STS scholars have investigated the reactions of donors to the trans-
formation of their “gift” into a commodity, showing that healthy volun-
teers are more critical than patients and ill people, who instead tend to
accept commercial agreements as a “necessary evil” in the development of
treatments (Haddow et al. 2007; Tupasela and Snell 2012; Hoeyer 2013).
Participants justify their willingness to donate with their trust in medical
institutions such as hospitals, and this trust arises from the perception
that they are oriented toward healthcare (Tutton 2004; Busby 2004; Bus-
by and Martin 2006; Hoeyer 2008). For that reason, a commercial orien-
tation added to such public banking enterprises can challenge their legit-
14                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

imacy and give rise to what Pálsson (2008, 47) has called the “bio-politics
of the dispossessed”, the strong opposition of actors who felt deprived of
the control and security they had enjoyed over samples and bioinfor-
mation and the relation of trust that grounded their participation.
     STS scholars, often in dialogue with bioethics, have explored the
available legal and regulatory mechanism for solving such quandaries
through exploring forms of consent and public oversight (see Corrigan
and Tutton 2009; Hoeyer 2008). This Special Issue concentrates on the
practical accomplishment of addressing potential commercial uses of tis-
sues and bioinformation in the interactions between biobank staff and
participants. French, Miller and Axler discusses especially how hospitals
configure their biobanking initiatives in order to leverage the commercial
potential of their privileged access to samples and health records whilst
maintaining the social license that derives from their healthcare orienta-
tion. Locating their analysis at the meso-organisational level, they high-
light the work that goes into aligning the “entrepreneurialization” of care
with the socially legitimate healthcare obligations in biobanking configu-
rations. Wyatt, Cook and McKevitt analyze in-depth the everyday work of
biobank staff, their numerous decisions and negotiations to enlist en-
gaged volunteers to participate in research with potential commercial ap-
plications. Romero-Bachiller and Santoro in this issue explore configura-
tions in human milk banking focused on the situated practices of dona-
tion and on how the different regimes of bio-objectification and use of
this fluid are intertwined with the construction of relationships and iden-
tities. In contrast, Singh presents a study on a form of biosocial bank – es-
tablished and funded by a non-profit foundation – where donated tissues
and data are also made available for potential commercial applications.
     The articles have in common that the banking activities analyzed hap-
pen in what we have called hybrid zones (Hauskeller and Beltrame
2016a). The frequent hybrid organization of contemporary biobanks sug-
gests that STS studies of this field might shift focus from analysing static
institutional arrangements and banking models to examining the logics
enacted, shaped and hybridized in the everyday work of participants and
biobank staff. This Special Issue contributes theoretically and empirically
to the study of how the specific institutional gestalt of contemporary bi-
obanks is not always as designed at the outset. It is instead shaped by the
engaged practices of the diverse actors involved, from which also the
production of economic, social and personal biovalues results.


4. Participation and the Construction of Identities and
   Forms of Biosociality

    Issues related to participation are often debated in STS literature in a
dialogue with bioethics that is sometimes critical, sometimes constructive.
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                      15
This dialogue has produced some normative pronunciations about the
right and just way of involving donors and to critical discussions about
the practical modalities of such involvement. Our contribution comple-
ments this work by looking at participation in biobanking as a site for the
construction of identities and forms of biosociality, which we consider
important biovalues in our analytical framework.
    The point of departure of the analytical framework we propose in this
introduction and which is supported in the original articles by, is that, as
convincingly argued by Tutton and Prainsack (2011, 1082), “discursive
and material practices of recruitment and conditions of participation”
produce different subjectivities. Scholars have shown how the legal
mechanisms of informed consent are also a technique that produces the
donor subjects as neoliberal, empowered citizens, autonomous political
agents who make choices based on risk-benefit calculations to improve
their wellbeing; subjects with the right and the duty to participate (Corri-
gan 2004; Hoeyer 2004; Tutton 2007). Moving the analytical centre away
from the legal mechanisms and formal engagement procedures, we focus
on the practical and pragmatic management of participation enacted by
involved actors (researchers, biobankers and participants). The aim is to
add another dimension to the STS analyses of subjectivities, identities and
forms of biosociality, to point out some of the limits of studying mostly
formal mechanisms of participation, instead of human interaction and
sense-making.
    The integrative and complementary perspective we propose draws on
Haimes and Whong-Barr’s finding that participation is “a highly varied
social process, with multiple meanings”, involving “levels and styles of
participation” as well as “variations in the meanings and processes at-
tached to the decision-making” (2004, 57). Participation is considered as
“an analytical framework” that enables researchers to explore “the multi-
ple and complex subject-positions that people occupy” in biobanking ac-
tivities (Tutton 2007, 176). This Special Issue explores the situated, con-
tingent and context-dependent social practices of making participation.
The specific forms of participation discussed emerge from the interac-
tions between the researchers and biobanks’ operators and the partici-
pants. This analytical angle, centered on situated practices in the contri-
butions, allows analyzing the production of biovalues in relation to per-
sonal as well as collective biosocial identities.
    Firstly, we look at the construction of collective identities. Several STS
scholars have explored how population identities are co-constructed
through processes of characterization involved in biobanking initiatives
(Nash 2012; Tupasela et al. 2015; Tupasela and Tamminen 2015;
Tupasela 2016). In order to characterize samples and data collected from
a population, ideologies and historical narratives about ancestry and eth-
nicity are mobilized and thus genetic traits are linked to notions of cultur-
al heritage and nationhood. However, it is debatable whether these forms
of populations characterization are sufficient in themselves to constitute a
16                                                            Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

politics of identity and contribute to the building of collective identifica-
tions. Prainsack has underlined that, rather than producing identities, bi-
obanks may “play in important role in reinforcing collective identities”
(Prainsack 2007, 97, emphasis added).
     Here the creation of identities is studied not as the effect of how par-
ticipants have been characterized, but as actively produced by partici-
pants through their interactions with biobank staff. Bühler, Barazzetti
and Kaufmann in this issue discuss the construction of populations in two
different biobanking initiatives in Switzerland, a city cohort project and a
general bioinformation biobanks oriented toward personalized medicine.
Their study shows that the strong engagement in the city cohort is based
on a shared identity and sense of belonging not engendered by formal
mechanism of participation, nor exclusively by the local setting. It is the
outcome of the long-term everyday interactions between biobank staff
and participants. The former provide regular medical feedback to the lat-
ter, transforming participation in a strong care relationships. In contrast,
the general bioinformation biobank, even if it deploys formal mechanisms
of participation, is not able to activate similar processes of identification.
Bühler, Barazzetti and Kaufmann‘s article demonstrates that characteriz-
ing populations through the combination of genetic relatedness and a
rhetoric of common heritage is not enough to mobilize engaged collective
participant identities. These emerge from the resonance between a specif-
ic biobank research orientation (the city cohort), the identifiable local set-
ting (the city) and the socially embedded practices of interaction with
participants.
     The role of situated practices of interaction and participation is also
thematic in the articles that draw on the concept of biosociality, a key (so-
cial) biovalue constitutive for ethically and socially, and hence scientifical-
ly, successful biobanking activities.
     Biosociality, and the related notion of biological citizenship (Rose and
Novas 2005), is often evoked in STS analyses of biobanking, and some-
times taken for granted. In our analytical framework, however, biosociali-
ty is problematized in relation to how it comes about. Biosociality was in-
troduced by Paul Rabinow (1996, 241) to refer to “a truly new type of au-
toproduction” around biological features that emerge from practices that
simultaneously generate knowledge, modify nature and reassemble identi-
ties and social formations (see also Gibbon and Novas 2008). Biosociality
and the related notion of “biological citizenship” (Rose and Novas 2005)
intend to address “modes of subjectification, through which individuals
are brought to work on themselves…by means of practices of the self, in
the name of their own life or health, that of their family or some other
collectivity” (Rabinow and Rose 2006, 198). These notions highlight the
active political involvement of individuals resulting in the construction of
communities of identities and biosocialities through new ways of “form-
ing novel relations with figures of scientific or medical authority in the
process of caring for, and about, health” (Rose and Novas 2005, 446) and
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                      17
in “an active role in shaping the direction of science” (Rose and Novas
2005, 452).
     The articles in this Special Issue, with their focus on biobank partici-
pation, show empirically that biosociality and biological citizenship are
neither an effect of formal participation mechanisms nor the outcome of
participant population characterization. Biosocial banking models as de-
fined by Gottweis and Lauss (2011), namely as sites where biosociality
and biological citizenship are produced, do not do so because of peculiar
organizational arrangements. Rather, the production of biosociality as
well as the “partnership model” in research and decision making
(Mayrhofer 2008) are the effect of the active political engagement of pa-
tient associations initiating and managing these banks (Novas 2006; Cal-
lon and Rabeharisoa 2008; Mayrhofer 2008; 2015). Furthermore, Sunder
Rajan (2008) has shown that a shared biological identification is not suffi-
cient to generate forms of biosociality. “Experimental subjects” partici-
pating in global clinical trials in developing countries are passively subjec-
tified in modalities set by these markets. Biosociality develops only under
structural conditions that enable participants to contribute and engage as
active political subjects (Sunder Rajan 2008, 178-179).
     We argue that these structural conditions for the development of bio-
sociality include the practices of participation enacted and the interaction
between biobanks staff and participants as a key factor. Jennifer Singh
shows how participants in a large autism genetic database create a form of
biosociality through participation and the virtual connectivity enabled by
the digital network platform developed by the funder. With the donation
of blood and information, the participants obtain a standardized and offi-
cial clinical evaluation. This return, or “diagnostic currency”, is important
besides the access to dedicated educational and support services it allows.
It is crucial for addressing anxieties, distress and uncertainties concerning
the condition of their children. Participation is a way to confirm the med-
ical and social legitimacy of the diagnosis. The search for a genetic cause
of autism answers to parents’ uncertainty about the causes and allows
them to build narratives of doing something for their families and for the
general autistic community that enacts a common biosociality (see also
Singh 2015). Biosociality is effected by active participation, in the ex-
changes and relationships with researchers and with other families on the
digital network platform. Finally, Singh’s analysis details how the peculiar
configuration of the biobank and the fact that the research includes only
one specific patient family configuration channels the production of bio-
sociality through the exclusion of other family structures and biases
against ethnic minorities, single parents and other economically disadvan-
taged groups.
     The role of interpersonal interactions in enabling biosociality is also
emphasized in the analysis presented by Wyatt, Cook and McKevitt. They
have studied the ongoing, every-day recruitment work of biobank staff
whose job it is to sign-up and maintain the long-term engagement of vol-
18                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

unteers in biomedical research. Romero-Bachiller and Santoro elucidate
how the different practices of human milk donation, sharing and tech-
nical manipulation not only enable the circulation of this human fluid and
the contained bacteria and microbiota, but engender forms of inter-
corporeal sharing as a site for the construction of biosocialities through
the development of altruistic engagement and reciprocity, imperatives to
care, trust and emotional identifications.
    The contribution of this Special Issue to the STS debate on biobank-
ing is to establish an analytical framework to decipher the scale and grade
of participation in relation to local biobanking configurations and the
work of all participating agents. In this way, we can elucidate the struc-
tural conditions for the differentiated emergence of biosocialities and
other biovalues instead of positing them as a fixed feature of biobanking
participation and/or institutional configurations.


5. The Production of Economic Biovalue in the Hybrid
   Bio-economy of Biobanking

    A complex debate has unfolded in STS over the political economies
and economic theories that are most plausible to explain the phenomena
that can be observed empirically. The dispute concerns especially the no-
tions of biovalue and how it is created. The focal points lie either on the
contribution of material and information from patients, which has been
criticized by some as a form of exploitation of clinical labour. The alter-
native position emphasizes that it is the labour of professionals that trans-
forms stuff that has been donated into an asset through appropriation
and the work involved in making it accessible.
    This debate is important for our perspective, and that is why we pre-
sent it here in some detail, to then argue that these perspectives are not
separate or stand in a clear hierarchy of relevance for the creation of
biovalues. There is more to biovalues than material and societal processes
of exploitation and assetization. This Special Issue presents new theoreti-
cal and empirical work on the creation of biovalues in biobanking and
widens considerably the meaning of bioeconomy in Mitchell and
Waldby’s work (2010). Recent empirical findings present a rich hybrid
tapestry of biobanking and related bioeconomies. Studying forms of en-
gagement and participation in relation to research and institutional agen-
das highlights that biovalues are not just financial revenues. Multiple
kinds of values are involved in biomedical activities and contribute to the
societal, scientific and economic performances of biobank projects.
    In economic terms, biobanks are conceived as important nodes in
what Waldby and Mitchell (2006, 31) have called “tissue economy”, that
is any “system for maximizing” the productivity of tissues “through strat-
egies of circulation, leverage, diversification, and recuperation”. Genomic
sequences and digitalized health, genealogical and environmental data are
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                       19
transformed into commodities that generate biovalue through the linking
of “various types of pharmaceutical and diagnostic biocapital” (Mitchell
and Waldby 2010, 337). In this way, biobanks are made part of a view of
the so called bioeconomy that defines it as the commercial dimension of
the life sciences, biomedicine and biotechnologies in a market-economy
framework (Birch 2012; Petersen and Krisjansen 2015; Pavone and
Goven 2017). Taking this perspective, terms such as biocapital and bio-
capitalism (Sunder Rajan 2006; Rose 2007) are often used to identify bio-
economic activities and to give a sense of the increasing insertion of “the
substances and promises of biological materials… into projects of prod-
uct-making and profit-seeking” (Helmreich 2008, 464), in modes of value
creation that follow the logic of capitalist processes of production and ac-
cumulation (Franklin and Lock 2006; Sunder Rajan 2006; Cooper 2008).
     As Helmreich notes, this understanding focusses the analysis and re-
flection on the dynamics of labour and commodification (2008, 464).
Commodification is inherent to the same notion of biovalue introduced
by Waldby (2002). As “the yield of vitality produced by the biotechnical
reformulation of living processes” (ivi 310), capitalization of biovalue oc-
curs through the transformation of biological matter into commodities
bought and sold on the market. The category of labour is instead intro-
duced by a reframing of the notion of participation in biomedical activities.
     Mitchell and Waldby (2010) indeed conceive participation in bi-
obanking as a form of clinical labour: that is, embodied or bodily-
embedded work, largely unrecognized, that produces economic value
through “subjects giving clinics access to the productivity of their in vivo
biology, the biological labor of living tissues” (Waldby and Cooper 2008,
59; see also Cooper and Waldby 2014). Clinical labour encompasses the
donation of tissue for medical research as well as to more onerous forms
of involvement like participation in clinical trials (Sunder Rajan 2006;
Cooper 2008). The provision of oocytes for assisted conception and stem
cell research, surrogate pregnancy, and the selling of organs and other
bodily tissues as a means of making a living (Waldby 2008; Waldby and
Cooper 2008). In the case of bioinformation biobanks, clinical labour re-
fers to the life of the participants (their medical history, their everyday nu-
trition habits and exposure to environmental factors) that is accessed and
valued through data mining techniques (Mitchell and Waldby 2010).
Biovalue resides in data obtained, and is realized through their commer-
cialization (as commodities) and the exclusive appropriation of the intel-
lectual property rights on them. Thus clinical labour is associated with the
notion of “free labour” introduced by Terranova (2000) to denote how
the activities of Internet users constitute an unpaid labour that produces
revenue. Participants are at the same time producers and the consumers
of the biomedical commodities thus produced (Tutton and Prainsack
2011; Harris et al. 2012).
     Recently this concept of the bioeconomy based on commodification
and clinical labour has been challenged regarding the meaning of
20                                                                  Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

biovalue (Birch and Tyfield 2013; Birch 2017) and this critique consti-
tutes part of the analytical framework we present here. Our understand-
ing of biovalue and how biovalues are produced combines insights from
Waldby and Mitchell but unfolds the multiple kinds of biovalues that
play a role in biobanking and in the related bioeconomies and biosocialities.
     Birch and Tyfield (2013) argue that the notion of biovalue is mislead-
ing, there is nothing valuable in biomaterials (tissues and/or bioinfor-
mation) per se, but what is valuable is the health they can provide (2013,
304). This value of health, or vitality, is socially constituted through ethi-
cal and political values, it is not an economic value inherent to the biolog-
ical characteristic of biomaterials (ivi 308). Secondly, if the economic val-
ue is realized in the market exchange of products providing health, value
is produced by “the knowledge and knowledge labor required to trans-
form … [biomaterials] into commodities” (ivi 308). Birch and Tyfield in-
sist, however, that value in the bioeconomy is not mainly realized through
commodity-based market exchange. The view that the biological as such
has no inherent economic value has several interrelated implications.
     The first is that value is generated by knowledge labour of researchers
and other professionals who transform bioresources into a “commodity of
some sort” (ivi 313). This implies that the procurement of biomaterials is
a practice located somewhere between an appropriation of resources and
the exploitation of (unwaged) “labour”. Both Birch and Tyfield (2013)
and Cooper and Waldby (2014) in a subsequent reformulation of the no-
tion of clinical labour have relied on the theories of Italian post-workerist
Marxists argue that in the post-Fordist mode of production the emerging
biocapitalist process of accumulation is penetrating life itself. Instead of
the subsumption of productive labour, the new logic of accumulation
works through the subsumption of “subjectivity itself, in its experiential,
relational, creative dimensions” (Morini and Fumagalli 2010, 240). The
collapse of foundational distinctions that characterizes the concept of
productive labour– such as that between the time of work and the time of
life, production and reproduction and production and consumption –
implies that a “theory of life-value” has to replace the classical “theory of
labour-value” (ivi 236). Whereas Birch and Tyfield (2013) use these no-
tions to argue for the inconsistency of the category of clinical labour,
Cooper and Waldby use it to expand the meaning of the concept of la-
bour:

     the life science business model is organized around a classical (Lockean)
     labor theory of value which identifies the cognitive labor of the scientist as
     the technical element necessary to the establishment of intellectual proper-
     ty in living matter. (…) In this account, the bodily contribution of tissue
     providers and human research subjects appears as an already available bio-
     logical resource, as res nullius, matter in the public domain, even while in
     practice the mobilization of these providers and subjects represents a
     growing logistical problem for the life science industries (Cooper and
     Waldby 2014, 9, original emphasis)
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                     21


    Cooper and Waldby maintain that tissue and bioinformation provi-
sion can be defined as a form of labour as it requests the mobilization of
providers and it is based on the alienation of biological resources intend-
ed as the product of clinical labour. However, defining the bodily contri-
bution as “an already available biological resource” in the public domain,
appropriated by intellectual property rights, confounds the insistence on
participants’ clinical labour as the crucial factor that creates biovalue. It
recognizes the mechanisms of value appropriation and of accumulation
by dispossession.
    This is the second implication of Birch and Tyfield’s criticism (2013).
In their view, the subsumption of biological and vital aspects implies that
value is generated by subjecting the knowledge necessary to that sub-
sumption to regimes of intellectual property rights. Applying the reflec-
tions of David Harvey (2010; 2014) and Christian Zeller (2008) on the
process of accumulation by dispossession, Birch and Tyfield argue that
value is generated from the extraction of rents from appropriated re-
sources through a regime of property and monopoly. Intellectual proper-
ty rights regimes act as mechanisms of enclosure: they enclose knowledge
and natural resources, dispossessing others from the property and ena-
bling the exclusive appropriation and the monopoly over the materials to
generate rents (see also Birch 2012; 2017).
    Consequently, the third implication is that rent-seeking strategies are
not based on the direct exploitation of labour and commodification,
when natural resources and knowledge are transformed into assets. An
asset is “a tangible or intangible resource that can be used to produce
value and, at the same time, has value as property” (Birch and Tyfield
2013, 302), while a commodity is produced for being exchanged as its
value is realized only in exchanges. Assets can generate value also through
other finance-dominated strategies of accumulation. As explored also in
other work by Birch (2012; 2017), patents are the objectification of the in-
tangible value of biological and knowledge property held by a firm. Re-
venue streams coming from patents are realized “from the trading of
shares or investments in the firm (i.e., financial assets) or intellectual
property (e.g., knowledge assets) and not from trading a material com-
modity produced by that firm” (Birch and Tyfield 2013, 311). Financial
speculations are thus based on “the more mundane political-economic”
promises of the rising value of shares in firms (Birch and Tyfield 2013,
322), what Birch later called a process of capitalization (2017, 466). In
other words, in their understanding the bioeconomy is not commodity-
based, but is asset-based: it is an economy aimed at asseticizing natural
resources and biotechnological knowledge in which value is generated
through rent-seeking processes that operate financial strategies of accu-
mulation in asset-based markets.
    Our approach does not require taking sides in the debate over com-
modification versus assetization and clinical labour versus accumulation
22                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

by dispossession. We conceive the economy of biobanks as a hybrid bio-
economy, which means that those different processes of biovalue produc-
tion can occur simultaneously and with varying dominance and overlap.
The configurations analyzed in the articles, their different institutional
setting with different biomaterials collected and exchanged, demonstrate
that concrete biobanking activities cannot be encapsulated once for all in-
to a rigid dichotomy between commodity-based economy and asset-based
economy. We do not set a certain regime of valuation as the starting point
or core of the analysis. Instead we focus the analytical gaze on the enacted
practices in the situated configurations that shape the production of
biovalues according to processes of commodification or assetization.
    Romero-Bachiller and Santoro explore the circulation and different
forms of bio-objectification of human breast milk, including a regime of
public redistribution to informal sharing economies based on interper-
sonal gift-giving, but also a commercial factory context in which the do-
nated milk is used to derive potential bio-commodities (patented probi-
otic products that employ bacterial strains to treat mastitis in lactating
women). French, Miller and Axler investigate the establishment of bio-
banking activities in entrepreneurial hospitals. They show that in the at-
tempt to leverage economic benefit from their unique access to patient
tissues and medical information these institutions employ a logic of as-
setization rather than commodification. Singh unfolds the different uses
of the donated materials in the SSC autism genomic database, insofar as
alongside the study to find links between copy number variants (CNVs)
in the genome and autistic phenotypes, the SSC also sells lymphoblastoid
cell lines and iPS cell lines derived from the donated blood samples (i.e.
commodification).
    Concentrating now on the second common debate among scholars on
the labour involved in the bioeconomy, we also see not an either-or situa-
tion but a continuum of practice. Not much is gained from a blanket cri-
tique of an exploitation of the donor’s clinical labour or capital value
through accumulation by dispossession of donor’s biological resources.
Empirically the provision of tissues and bioinformation in any biobank is
influenced by the interplay between biobanking configurations and the
concrete practices of valuing that are enacted in and around the activity.
The provision of biomaterials is shaped in concrete biobanking contexts
by a complex of institutional settings, ethical and moral norms enforced
by legal mechanisms and enacted by involved actors, as well as by the
power relations among them.
    Feminists bioethicists have shown that the procurement of oocytes
and surrogacy in assisted fertilization are a form of exploitation of clinical
labour (e.g. Dickenson 2001; Waldby 2008; Widdows 2009). At the same
time, sociologists have characterized the appropriation of supernumerary
IVF embryos for stem cell research in developing countries as accumula-
tion by dispossession (Glasner 2005; Gupta 2011). In the most recent
study we have been conducting on cord blood biobanking, it is difficult
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                     23
to identify either forms of exploitation of labour or accumulation by dis-
possession: in public banking an otherwise discarded tissue is collected
but then redistributed for public medical needs; in the private banking
sector this bioresource is valued precisely because it is owned as a private
biological asset (Hauskeller and Beltrame 2016b). Commodification takes
different and hybrid forms in which the banking service itself is more
consistently commodified than is the biomaterial (ibid.).
    Wyatt, Cook and McKevitt address specifically the limits of the notion
of clinical labour as applied to participating volunteers in the UK BioRe-
source. This institution is not simply a collection of samples, genomic da-
ta and health and lifestyle information. It is designed as a living database,
registering individuals willing to participate in future medical research.
Clinical labour as theorized by Mitchell and Waldby (2010) and Cooper
and Waldby (2014) does not envisage the ongoing labour of both partici-
pants and BioResource staff in building the basis for continuous involve-
ment. It does not include the “numerous decisions and negotiations that
are involved in the everyday work of maintaining (the value of) volun-
teers” (Wyatt et al. in this issue). A wider or different concept and termi-
nology might be needed to denote what participants do in terms of labour
and the source of biovalue, which does not reside in “biological frag-
ments and/or database entries”, but in and through “the ongoing bioso-
cial participation of the willing research volunteer” (ibid.).


6. From Biovalue to Biovalues. The Entanglement of Multi-
   ple Kinds of Value

    In their critique of the notion of biovalue, Birch and Tyfield (2013,
308) argue that charging “the biological” of a value-generative capacity
would imply to neglect the role of what they call “bio-values”: “the social
or ethical values that make biotechnology a profitable venture” because
through them “vitality comes across as a preference (or social value) of
individual citizen consumers rather than a new value (or capital) rela-
tion”. We take this alleged conflation of social/ethical and economic val-
ues as a positive point of departure to examine the complexity of bioeco-
nomic activities. Separating ethical and social values from labour and
other political-economic processes suggests that only the latter shape and
contribute to the generation of economic biovalue. Ethical and social
biovalues are thus considered exogenous factors in the economic process,
whose unique role is that of providing preferences and demands to meet
by the bioeconomy.
    To mark what our perspective adds to the literature, we have been
using biovalues in the plural. This stresses that multiple co-constitutive
values (ethical, social and economic) are mobilized in the bioeconomy of
biobanking activities. Waldby and Mitchell (2006, 33) recognized that
any form of circulation (i.e. tissue economy) is presupposed on and con-
24                                                           Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

stitutes certain kinds of social and power relations and involves different
social values. Other STS scholars have shown how symbolic and strategic
values are produced alongside monetary or financial values in biobanking
activities (Tupasela 2006; 2016; Tupasela and Snell 2012). Our contribu-
tion goes further by proposing a way of accounting for the realization of
different biovalues and explaining how they are produced in co-
constitutive processes. Instead of only looking at how the production of
economic biovalue is premised on ethical and social biovalues, and how
the latter shape the ways in which the former are created and circulate,
we argue that the concrete practices of actors involved in biobanking ac-
tivities are practices of valuing based on multiplex systems of worth and,
as such, they at once produce diverse kinds of values.
    Recently, Niccolò Tempini introduced a helpful model of the creation
of multidimensional values, analysing the online interactions of patients
on the social media-based data infrastructure PatientsLikeMe. He argues
that business value and scientific value extracted from the data generated
by the interactions of patients on the digital platform are not simply ac-
companied by the community value (the creation of communities of peo-
ple sharing similar conditions) and the individual value (medical infor-
mation obtained and the building of “narratives and interpretations of the
self”) but also fostering the latter (Tempini 2017, 196). In his understand-
ding patients’ interactions are not a form of free, clinical labour that gen-
erates economic and epistemic values, but also a value in themselves (as
producing biosociality, informational and self-identity resources). Moreo-
ver, the more economic and epistemic value is generated, the more re-
sources and opportunities for further community and individual values
arise. As Tempini points out, there is “a complex convergence of value
dimensions at play”, since “different data users are interested in multiple
value dimensions at once” (2017, 195-196).
    We propose that in biobanks also a plurality of biovalues is produced,
and that they are co-constitutive of each other. The articles in this Special
Issue evidence that the production of economic biovalue does not simply
rely on the generation of biosociality and other that make the provision of
tissues and bioinformation more legitimate and readily available. Forms
of biosocial participation are not simply instrumentalized for the appro-
priation of economic value, because biosocialities are generated through
participation in biobanking activities. This is particularly clearly brought
out in Singh’s analysis of diagnostic currency: by donating tissues and
bioinformation participants have access to resources to construct identi-
ties and relationships, to access services and to solve anxieties related to
the respective health conditions. Romero-Bachiller and Santoro show
how donating or sharing milk realizes and enforces commitments to the
ethical biovalues of altruism and solidarity (helping other mothers) and
the social biovalues in establishing kin-like relationships. Bühler,
Barazzetti and Kaufmann’s article also discusses the individual values re-
Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                    25
lated to obtaining medical information and care as well as the social
biovalues that lie in developing a sense of belonging to a community.
    We have argued that multiple biovalues are enacted and carry forth
the biobanking bioeconomy, and the articles in this Special Issue unfold
this conceptual position. The realization of different biovalues is integral
to biobanking practices. Several kinds of values converge in heterogene-
ous and hybrid practices of bioeconomic profit and value production.
Hybrid economic institutions such as biobanks do not represent any kind
of rigid institutional regime of value production. Hybridity, as we argued,
blurs the boundary between institutional sectors and economic forms of
production and circulation. The production of biovalues has to be stu-
died as the outcome of both the entanglement of a very specific banking
configuration and the practices of participation and valuing enacted by
biobanks staffs, researchers and participants. The co-constitution of so-
cial and economic biovalues results from the fact that practices of valuing,
as argued above, are always dependent on a complex of different systems
of worth encompassing moral and social norms as well as economic valua-
tions.
    Important to add is, though, that this does not mean that the produc-
tion of biovalues can only be described as contingent varieties, in the
sense of disallowing generalization or the analysis of what happens in
terms of existing theoretical concepts in political economy, sociology and
ethics. In this introduction to the empirical articles that follow, we have
explained these contingent varieties as the outcome of concrete condi-
tions for the production of multiple (economic and non-economic)
biovalues. These conditions are dependent on the particular configura-
tions of patient participation, interactions between staff and participants,
design of purpose, and biovalues envisaged. As such, the production of
biovalues is made intelligible and accountable in the different shapes it
takes.
    Doing this we are not suggesting that forms of exploitation or accu-
mulation by dispossession, driven by profit motives, are not equally im-
portant for the growing bioeconomy. We also don’t stipulate that exploi-
tative practices involved are counteracted or can be traded off against
other biovalues like health benefits and a sense of biosocial belonging or
citizenship. Shifting the focus on concrete practices, while considering
the theories and categories developed in political economy, STS, sociolo-
gy and bioethics, enables us to explain the shapes of the production of
both economic and social biovalues in biobanking configurations. Our
analytical framework is not limited to re-integrating the analysis of eco-
nomic biovalue and the reflection on biosociality and identity-building in
biobanks. It traces a new path in the analysis of the bioeconomy of bio-
banks as sites for the simultaneous and interdependent production of
multiple biovalues. The articles in the Special Issue contribute new and
original research to this contemporary critical project.
26                                                                Tecnoscienza – 9 (2)

Acknowledgments
     This article and the editing of the Special Issue are part of the REGUCB pro-
ject (Regulating Umbilical Cord Blood Biobanking in Europe). The REGUCB
project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement
No 657361.
     We thank the participants in the 2016 4S/EASST conference panel “Bi-
obanks: the interdependence between forms of biovalue creation and donor par-
ticipation” in Barcelona for the exciting discussions, and our colleague Niccolò
Tempini at the University of Exeter, exchanges with whom have helped us refine
the ideas presented here. We acknowledge gratefully the support we received
from the editors of Tecnoscienza, especially Manuela Perrotta, and also the work
of the peer reviewers who provided insightful and instructive comments on the ar-
ticles. Last but most importantly, we thank the authors of the articles in this Spe-
cial Issue for responding to our invitation in the call for papers, for providing us
with original research articles from their ongoing work, and for their effective co-
operation throughout.


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Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                          27
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Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                         29
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Beltrame & Hauskeller                                                        31
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