Beyond the person: the construction and transformation of blood as a resource

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Many studies of blood donation have looked at the motives of donors, their relationship with the wider society, and corresponding values such as gift-giving, altruism and responsibility.These underpin a rhetorical representation of person-to-person donation that neglects the many technical processes that take place between donation and eventual use and the material nature of blood itself. This ethnographic study, conducted in four UK blood donation sites, describes the various practices involved in routine sessions, rather than the motives or values or donors or staff. It focuses on the procedures and equipment that not only ensure blood is collected safely and efficiently, but the extent to which they determine the nature of the collected blood itself. Taking our cue from posthuman approaches, we argue donated blood as something that is 'made' only when it leaves the body; in other words, it is not simply extracted, but is constructed through specific practices. We illustrate how, as blood is separated from the body, it is increasingly depersonalized and reconstituted in order to have biomedical value. In this way, rather than reproduce the essentialist claim that blood is what social scientists often described as a 'special kind of substance', we point to the ways in which donated blood alters as it moves in time and space. We argue that such transformations occur in both symbolic and material realms, such that the capacity of blood to have both cultural meaning and clinical value is dependent on the fact that it is never stable or singular.

The Plasma Mobile, ‘A gift from heaven’: The impact of health technology transfer on trial perceptions and expectations during the Ebola-Tx Trial, Conakry

“…Technology has impacts on the understanding and value of the blood products. R. Lynch and S. Cohn studied in the UK blood service centers how blood acquired value through all the transformations [47]. For plasma, our study showed that the technology transforming body fluid into the final product was also important because it helped to illuminate the difference between blood and plasma.…”

A scoping review of sociology of voluntary blood donation

“…They argue that this narrative does not accurately represent the processing of blood that takes place between collection and eventual use or address new meanings that may emerge as a result of the processing of blood. They discuss the social implications [13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…In a case study from Belgium, Wittock and colleagues show that BCA practices of considering blood as a gift in interactions with donors and a commodity when manufactured and sold to hospitals may optimize workflows but also lead to sub-optimal communication about blood processing between donors and BCAs [13]. Moreover, the narrative of blood as a gift may not coincide with how donors understand their donations [14]. Lynch and Cohn's observations of staff and donors in donor centres in the United Kingdom provide evidence that BCAs could broaden the narratives employed in communications with donors to include explanations of how blood is processed or used for research.…”

Posthuman perspectives: relevance for a global public health

“…In contrast, Lynch and Cohn (2017) take as their starting point a topic frequently reduced to the broader politics of life -blood donation. They argue that the exclusion of the routine, material aspects of blood donation in much research masks a hidden multiplicity of concepts.…”