Blood donors, development and modernisation: configurations of biological sociality and citizenship in post-colonial Singapore

Abstract

This article examines the governmental apparatus organised around Singapore's Blood Transfusion Service (SBTS) and the knowledge, experts and techniques associated with transfusion medicine. I term this apparatus, which was in place in the Singapore from its first steps towards political independence in 1959 until 1990, ‘Singapore's haemato-logic assemblage’. Drawing on the work of Foucault, the article explores how this assemblage overflowed into and reconfigured understandings of biological sociality and citizenship in post-colonial Singapore. More specifically, it argues that, in the 30 years following independence, this assemblage brought into being a new figure of the biological citizen by creating a sphere of possibilities for Singaporeans to think and act accordingly. This new figure of the citizen is ‘the blood donor’. Articulated around the SBTS and the knowledge and techniques of transfusion medicine, this donor is a Singaporean who gives blood to save the lives of fellow citizens and participates, thereby, in the development and modernisation of the newly independent nation. To substantiate this argument, the article shows how the haemato-logic assemblage helped to realise this new figure of the citizen by creating – through narratives, statistics, spaces and rewarding schemes – a sphere of possibilities in which Singaporeans could think and act as blood donors.

Keywords:

• biological citizenship
• bio-sociality
• subjectivity
• identity
• blood donor
• Singapore

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the three anonymous reviewers whose comments helped me tighten my argument. Furthermore, the research presented here would not have been possible without the University of London's Central Research Fund, the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore and the Brocher Foundation in Geneva. I gratefully acknowledge their generous support.

Notes

1. Richard M. Titmuss' The gift relationship: from human blood to social policy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970) represents the classic example of this way of thinking where the NBTS and transfusion medicine is seen as a key part of Britain's post-war welfarist project.

2. This figure of the citizen blood donor is not the only possible form of citizenship that can stem from transfusion medicine and SBTS-like institutions. Countries like France and the UK provide good illustrations. In these two countries, transfusion medicine was not incorporated into a Singaporean-like modernisation project but into projects to build a society characterised by ‘social solidarity’ and articulated around a strong ‘welfare state’ (Rabinow 1999, Chap. 4, Fontaine 2002, Reubi 2009, Chap. 3). This favoured the creation of citizens giving blood to transform the country into a socially just society characterised by solidarity and welfare for all instead of citizens giving blood to develop and modernise a newly independent nation as in Singapore.