lluminating dark matter in pharmaceutical markets and beyond

Intervenante : Susi Geiger (University College Dublin)

We challenge a recent tendency in market studies research to privilege human actors and agencies in markets, particularly under labels such as ‘market shaping’. Contrasting with accounts of easily ‘pacificied’ market goods, we draw into market studies insights from Karen Barad’s agential realism and  pharmaceutical science and technology studies to highlight the liveliness of simultaneously informing and informed materials. Through the case of two pharmaceutical matters – opioids such as the infamous OxyContin and GLP-1 receptor agonists such as Ozempic/Wegovy – we demonstrate how material agency in markets is continuously generative of new interactions and relationships, extending to building completely new markets, which may have been unanticipated by those shaping the markets around these materials. We use the term ‘dark matter’ in a metaphorical sense, highlighting its ‘invisibilities’: material agency often escapes not only the market frames constructed and shaped to ‘pacify’ it, but also our analytical gaze as market studies researchers. Illuminating dark matter thus highlights our own relationalities and positionalities: the parts we play in the co-production of research and the cuts we make in the market stories we tell.