The political economy of the manufacturing and production of pharmaceuticals

Conor M. W. Douglas

Chapter 8 in Handbook of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Studies, 2026, pp 132-141 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Approaching pharmaceuticals through the lens of Science and Technology Studies (STS) works to reveal that their production is far more than a technical matter of scaling scientific discovery. Rather, production and manufacturing are deeply embedded within complex socio-technical systems, shaped by shifting political economies, institutional arrangements, material infrastructures, and imaginaries of health, care, and innovation. This Part of the Handbook, and the associated chapters that follow, foregrounds the production and manufacturing of pharmaceuticals and advanced therapies as dynamic socio-technical processes. It situates production not as a neutral or mechanical activity but as one co-produced with evolving systems of (bio)value, nation-state, and corporate power, and pharmaceutical expertise across global, national, and local contexts. To orientate the reader to the chapters to come in this section, a very brief sketch is provided here of the co-evolution of pharmaceutical production and manufacturing and the changing political-economic system that it is based within. What is argued here is that the history of capitalist development can be linked to the everyday politics of the production and manufacturing of medicines. Furthermore, the technologies and technuques used to produce pharmaceuticals change over time with shifting forms of social and economic organization. The material changes in these tools are implicated in how pharmaceutical production is organized, and the roles and responsibilities of various actors in the production process. As chapters in this section work to track these changes, we collectively work towards a reframing of the socio-technical political-economy of pharmaceutical production.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical manufacturing; Political economy of manufacturing; Means of pharmaceutical production; Mode of pharmaceutical production; Materiality of pharmaceuticals; Bioeconomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035338443
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