ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the originally presented to a session entitled 'At your service: Affective and 'immaterial' labour in the global economy' at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans. It is important to draw attention to the labouring consumer. Hardt and Negri emphasise the vital dimensions of biopolitics, focusing on the production and reproduction of life itself for them, it would be misleading 'to treat the new labouring practices in biopolitical society only in their intellectual and incorporeal aspects. In order to draw attention to the significant economic role of women in the reproductive sector of biomedicine, some scholars have adopted an expanded notion of labour. Arguably, the people contributing cheek swabs to personal genomics services are engaging in co-working, a collective labour process that ultimately results in large-scale biobanking. Perhaps the social network of Facebook helps to illuminate the issue of labour and co-working in the context of personal genomics.
