Development Histories, AMR Futures, and the Biosociality of a ‘Hotspot'

Paul Rabinow identified ‘practices of life’ as a potent site of twenty-first-century knowledge and power, arguing that instruments of genomic characterisation will reshape contemporary social relations, thus establishing a new politics of the molecular. Rabinow named this new epoch biosociality. In Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance terms, gene sequencing technologies and bioinformatics programmes are used to determine resistance profiles of humans, nonhuman animals, and the environments they are embedded within. A regime of global governance has grown around the statistical analysis of the data produced by these new technologies, in which geographic locations displaying certain resistance profiles are designated as ‘hotspots’ of resistance emergence, justifying intervention in the behaviours of the populations inhabiting them. Producers of statistical data have identified a correlation between AMR gene prevalence and abundance and national development status. They call for more research into the socioeconomic and political capacities of nations to respond to the AMR challenge. This article responds to that call by examining AMR in the context of global development. It explores the processes by which global development regimes have created and perpetuated environments conducive to the production of AMR hotspots in low-income countries. Focusing on two case studies – Bangladesh’s export aquaculture sector and rural development in the West African Republic of Benin – I speculate how histories of postcolonial development potentially configure AMR hotspots. Drawing upon Hannah Landecker’s ‘biology of history’ concept, I argue that the historical development regimes, and the ideologies that underpinned them, have contributed to AMR futures. The article concludes by cautioning that unless combined with insights from qualitative research, advances in biotechnologies – and the knowledge they produce – risk turning the molecular into the latest iteration of North-South domination, perpetuating uneven power relationships and racialised stereotypes by designating certain populations as risky producers of AMR.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-SA

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