The Promises of Biology and the Biology of Promises: An Ethnography of the Korean Stem Cell Enterprise

Jieun Lee
Anthropology
UC Davis

Jieun Lee’s dissertation is an ethnography of stem cell enterprise in South Korea (Korea) focusing on the emergence and proliferation of promises that center on the biological potential of stem cells. Conducting a fieldwork in Korea, she has observed burgeoning markets for stem cell promises and their derivatives. From the novel business of stem cell banking, often fashioned as “bio-insurance,” to presumably more risky and expensive forms of illegitimate stem cell treatment, they revolve around the biological potential of stem cells as the basis of promises. Her dissertation examines how this specific techno-scientific object called “stem cell” is made into a “promissory thing”—an object of knowledge and concern that drives desire, investment, and speculation for diverse actors with myriad anticipations for the future. Exploring various sites where stem cells are studied, discussed, and marketed from laboratories to consumer markets, she investigates the relations and practices that make stems cells into entities enfolding social-scientific-economic futures.

Lee is particularly interested in how stem cells are discursively and materially made and maintained as a specific life form, how they have gained cultural and economic significance as a promissory thing, and how they address people’s hope and anxiety through their biological specificity. Conceptualizing stem cell enterprise as a kind of “ecology of promises”, she highlights how promises are made to proliferate and become concrete elements of the social fabric of life in Korea.