ABSTRACT
In the initial stages of our fieldwork we had encountered oncology asset maps, government-sponsored marketing documents aimed at accelerating the commercialization of public-sector life sciences research. Curiously to us, these asset maps counted patient populations as assets alongside technological infrastructure and professional expertise. We first sought to understand these maps with reference to concepts that would evoke their biopolitical dimensions. One of the things that Clarke's work helped crystalize for us was the potential to enroll oncology asset maps as actants in our fieldwork as nonhuman actors in the representational process. We decided to reformulate our interview guide so that a particular oncology asset map was an explicit feature of discussion with interview participants. Confrontations with the asset map provoked a more head-on and thickly descriptive Situational Analysis of our participants' views of the entrepreneurial mission and vision of their organizations. SA helped reconcile divergent methodological assumptions.
