ABSTRACT
This chapter explores recent developments in global health studies of electronic waste (e-waste), a topic at the anthropological crossroads of science practice and expertise, labor, and toxic bioinformatics. As accounts of e-waste disaster in Asia and Africa began to emerge in the early 2000s, international science and advocacy interests and interventions began to emerge, leading to a variety of solutions-based waste management projects and, more recently, environmental health studies. These emerging environmental health science projects produce e-waste biodata and measurable bio-evidence that might rightfully inform global e-waste management and policy, but there exist particular knowledge extraction and epistemic politics amidst these epidemiological studies that call for careful environmental health critique and critical bioinformatic reflection. To navigate these underlying biopolitics of global e-waste health studies, this chapter introduces the term bioinformatic extraction to signal the testing of bodies and extraction of biodata—like blood, semen, and maternal urine—to bolster e-wastes’ epidemiological evidence. It will be argued that this theoretical perspective can help guide a critical anthropology of e-waste bioinformation and can ultimately help advance theories of e-waste biopolitics.
