ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to commoning, enclosure, community, obligation, gift, and debt in the domain of the life sciences and in the biopolitical spaces. It maps the geographies of enclosures in a 'bodily commons' in two ways: through an exploration of how the language of the bodily commons is posed as a critical articulation; and the invocation of a bodily commons points to what is increasingly recognised in the register of global environmental crisis. The chapter considers how the turn to 'commons' thinking and practice in the life sciences reveals what some commentators identify as the evolution of 'biocapital' towards new forms of sharing and the pooling of resources or 'assets'. It reviews with a consideration of the extent to which biobanking initiatives are identified as sites for the creation of new bodily commons. The chapter explains how bio-banks are seen to threaten, devalue, or shrink an expansive notion of a 'bodily commons' or constitute a commons in new ways.
