ABSTRACT
This chapter takes as its subject the collected organs, tissues, fluids and fragments of the human body that have been, and continue to be collected and retained as part of scientific and medical practice in the UK. It presents and explores the dual categorization of these entities as both scientific-artefact-objects, and as personified-human-entities using empirical examples of contestation work that has made the duality of these entities visible. In order for biological material to function in the generation and dissemination of knowledge and information they must first undergo any number of material reconfigurations. The chapter explores the labour that goes into this configuration, and offers some reflections on the nature of the 'value' embodied by human biological materials as useful resources. It also presents collected human biological materials as artefactual and productive resources, and an analysis of these scientific objects as emergent within networks of expertise and in relation to technological interventions.
