Hematopolitics: Blood Donation and Contested Belonging in East Asia

自从发现了输血拯救生命的能力以来，人血已成为现代生物医学治疗的宝贵资源；然而，维持稳定和安全的血液供应仍然是世界各地许多社会面临的挑战。即使在献血率相对较高的富裕国家，随着人口老龄化和COVID-19等新传染病的出现，新的挑战也摆在面前。这项研究质疑这些问题是如何促使人们对社会身份和血缘归属感产生新的理解的。在日本和韩国，血液在亲属关系、国家地位和污染方面具有很强的象征力量，我想问的是，国家身份和社会关系是如何通过献血来想象和争论的。这扩展了献血社会分析的现有参数，这些参数往往侧重于利他主义和社会团结。我没有把我的调查局限于个人献血的动机或献血所产生的强烈联系，而是问献血是如何让人联想到社会界限的概念，围绕着谁应该给谁献血以及为什么献血的隐性理解。通过采用一个新的框架——血液政治学——我强调了这些界限被献血者、卫生专业人员、患者和广大公众划定和挑战的平凡过程。为了在两国各自的血库历史中对这些社会动态进行背景分析，我将检查档案材料，以追溯自二十世纪中叶引入血库系统以来，献血是如何动员和改变血液和血液关系的概念的。特别是，我将仔细研究献血是如何在战后的国家建设中被确立为公民的一种实践，围绕着这两个国家的纯血统国家的信仰。然后，我将询问这些历史上形成的理解是如何体现的，以及今天参与血库的人是如何质疑的。我将访问献血中心和运动，并与献血者、血库的卫生专业人员和接受输血的患者交谈。此外，我将强调那些在民族主义想象中被边缘化的人的观点，例如各种种族和社会经济少数群体，以探索如何通过跨社会边界的血液交换产生新的归属感。然后，我将进一步将这些动态置于更广泛的血液文化政治中，通过检查与社交媒体上流传的所谓理想献血者、好血/纯血、坏血/污染血和无辜病人有关的话语。通过追踪血液从献血者流向患者的社会动态，并将这些动态置于血库的历史和血液的文化政治中，本研究为社会秩序和卫生基础设施的共同生产提供了一个揭示性的见解。在东亚的背景下，这个项目将是第一个将关于纯血统意识形态和民族主义的成熟工作与生物技术的批判性研究结合起来的项目之一。通过促进对以血液为基础的民族主义的生物文化理解，我揭示了献血是如何作为公民与民族国家关系体现和争议的场所运作的。更广泛地说，这项研究揭示了生物技术时代社会关系和归属的重塑。现在，从人身上提取组织以挽救生命、开发诊断、治疗和数据存储已成为常规做法。在经济/政治两极分化和健康差距日益扩大的情况下，这些组织捐赠正在成为公民之间最本能的接触点。这项研究阐明了普通人为了同胞和子孙后代的健康而献出自己身体部位的方式可能带来的社会变革。

Since the discovery of the life-saving power of blood transfusion, human blood has become an invaluable resource for treatment in modern biomedicine; however, maintaining a steady and safe supply of blood continues to be a challenge in many societies around the world. Even in wealthier countries where the blood-donation rate has been relatively high, new challenges lie ahead as populations age and new infectious diseases like COVID-19 emerge. This research questions how such issues are prompting new understandings of social identity and belonging around blood. Focusing on Japan and South Korea, where blood has strong symbolic power in relation to kinship, nationhood and pollution, I ask how national identity and social relationships are imagined and contested through blood donation. This extends the existing parameters of social analyses of blood donation, which have tended to focus on altruism and social solidarity. Instead of limiting my inquiry to individuals' motivations to donate blood or the strong bond this creates, I ask how blood donation conjures up concepts of social boundaries around implicit understandings of who should donate to whom and why. By employing a new framework - hematopolitics - I highlight the mundane processes through which these boundaries are drawn and challenged by blood donors, health professionals, patients and larger publics. In order to contextualise these social dynamics within the respective histories of blood banking in the two countries, I will examine archival materials to trace how blood donation has mobilised and changed notions of blood and blood relations since the introduction of blood-banking systems in the mid-twentieth century. In particular, I will scrutinise how blood donation has been established as a practice in citizenship amidst post-war nation-building around beliefs in pure-blooded nationhood in the two countries. I will then interrogate how these historically formed understandings are embodied and contested by people involved in blood banking today. I will visit blood-donation centres and campaigns and talk to blood donors, health professionals at blood banks and patients receiving transfusions. Furthermore, I will underline the perspectives of those who are marginalised in nationalistic imaginaries, such as various ethnic and socioeconomic minorities, to explore how new senses of belonging are emerging via exchanges of blood across social boundaries. I will then further situate these dynamics within the broader cultural politics of blood by examining discourses relating to so-called ideal blood donors, good/pure blood, bad/polluted blood and innocent patients that are circulating on social media. By tracing social dynamics around blood as it flows from blood donors to patients and situating these dynamics within the histories of blood banking and the cultural politics of blood, this research offers a revealing insight into the co-production of social order and health infrastructure. In the context of East Asia, this project will be one of the first to bring well-established work on pure-blood ideology and nationalism into conversation with the critical study of biotechnology. By promoting a biocultural understanding of blood-based nationalism, I unveil how blood donation operates as a site where citizens' relationships with nation-states are embodied and contested. More broadly, this research sheds light on the remaking of social relationships and belonging in the era of biotechnology. It has now become routine practice to take tissues from people to save lives and develop diagnostics, therapeutics and data repositories. These tissue donations are becoming the most visceral contact points between citizens amidst growing economic/political polarisation and health disparities. This research elucidates the potential for social transformation in the ways ordinary people give their body parts for the good of the health of fellow citizens and future generations.