Synthesizing Hope opens up the material and social world of pharmaceuticals by focusing on an unexpected place: iThemba Pharmaceuticals. Founded in 2009 with a name taken from the Zulu word for hope, the small South African startup with an elite international scientific board was tasked with drug discovery for tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria. Anne Pollock uses this company as an entry point for exploring how the location of the scientific knowledge production matters, not only for the raw materials, production, licensing, and distribution of pharmaceuticals but also for the making of basic scientific knowledge.
Consideration of this case exposes the limitations of global health frameworks that implicitly posit rich countries as the only sites of knowledge production. Analysis of iThemba identifies the problems inherent in global north/south divides at the same time as it highlights what is at stake in who makes knowledge and where. It also provides a concrete example for consideration of the contexts and practices of postcolonial science, its constraints, and its promise.
Synthesizing Hope explores the many legacies that create conditions of possibility for South African drug discovery, especially the specific form of settler colonialism characterized by apartheid and resource extraction. Paying attention to the infrastructures and laboratory processes of drug discovery underscores the materiality of pharmaceuticals from the perspective of their makers, and tracing the intellectual and material infrastructures of South African drug discovery contributes new insights about larger social, political, and economic orders.
Industry Reviews
"Synthesizing Hope opens up a fascinating landscape of the challenges and possibilities of postcolonial science. Using iThemba Pharmaceuticals as her research site, Pollock opens up postcolonial knowledge construction in brilliant detail to reveal the myriad layers of power, capital, and global politics that shape the making of modern science. This is a sobering tale of ambition and failure, of faith and despair, reminding us that the histories of colonial science continue to haunt the future hope of lives in the Global South."--Banu Subramaniam, University of Massachusetts Amherst
"It fills a gap in the anthropology of pharmaceuticals . . . . It is rare for science and technology studies scholars to conduct research in laboratories in the Global South; it is also rare for them to do long-term fieldwork. Pollock shows what can be gained from following the life and death of a research company over time, situating it both locally and in the webs of global and local research connections. Synthesizing Hope presents fascinating insights on how a company called iThemba Pharmaceuticals was set up on the outskirts of Johannesburg. . . . The post-apartheid context, the vivid descriptions of laboratory life, and the incisive analysis of the context in which the laboratory emerges makes Synthesizing Hope a compelling case study of postcolonial science."-- "Medical Anthropology Quarterly"
"This book shows us how pharmaceutical science both derives from and drives different forms of political, biomedical, and affective power. Moving seamlessly from molecules to macro-structures, the text troubles the distinction between economic and emotional investment in science. Pollock reveals how 'hope' is more than a feeling, but a practice that is synthesized in relation to scientific disciplines. It's a necessary read for everyone who cares about the future of global health and democratization of knowledge."--Ruha Benjamin, Princeton University
