EXCEL: The Pursuit of Excellence — Biotechnologies, Enhancement and Bodycapital in Portugal (PTDC/SOC-ANT/30572/2017)

Focusing in particular on the Greater Lisbon area, whilst paying constant attention to the national and transnational networks that influence this context, the project aims to complement existing statistical and bioethical analyses with qualitative and ethnographic data in order to better capture the complexity of these practices, which bring together subjectivity, bodily changes and citizenship. Drawing on the theoretical proposals of Aihwa Ong (2006), which invite us to consider how individuals experience and internalise, as desires and aspirations, the new values and models resulting from the adaptation of global capitalism to local realities, we shall consider the concept of citizenship as a sociocultural process of subjectification. The aim will be to link the micro-dynamics of specific forms of bio-investment – by exploring practices, processes and aspirations for self-construction – with the emergence of new markets and transnational circuits for cosmetic medical tourism. The technological capacity to transform biology, linked to advances in genetic engineering, pharmacology, bioengineering, cybernetics and nanotechnology, has generated a wide variety of devices for manipulating bodies, human characteristics and functions, which are commonly defined as ‘enhancement technologies’.This definition encompasses various ‘cosmetic’ biotechnologies, such as cosmetic plastic surgery, skin depigmentation treatments, ‘smart drugs’ and recreational drugs, hormone therapies and biohacking implants – which aim to enhance human characteristics, including physical appearance and cognitive performance, regardless of any formal diagnosis of ongoing medical conditions. Based on economic analyses of the rise in the consumption of cosmetic biotechnologies in Portugal during the years of the financial crisis, and informed by empirical and bioethical studies on the risks, limits and future prospects of body modification, this project aims to critically analyse enhancement technologies within the economic and socio-historical context of their production.