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Sara V Komarnisky, Collective Biologies: Healing Social Ills through Sexual Health Research in Mexico, Emily A. Wentzell, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 79, Issue 3, July 2024, Pages 281–283, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrad058
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To gather the research for Collective Biologies, Emily Wentzell followed middle-class, heterosexual couples in urban Mexico through four years of participation in the Cuernavaca Human Papilloma Virus in Men (HIM) study, a longitudinal, observational medical research study (p. 2). She was interested in how middle-class, un-paid participants incorporate research studies like this into their broader life projects (p. 3). In the book, she analyzes how people’s cultural ideologies regarding health not only influenced their experiences of medical research but “actually enabled them to incorporate research participation into wide-ranging social and biological goals at the levels of the couple, the family, and the Mexican populace” (p. 3).
Chapter 1 starts with a narrative of one research project participant, Arturo, linking his experience as a victim of a carjacking to his subsequent religious conversion, changes in his marriage, and finally his participation in the HIM research study five years later. For Arturo, the carjacking led him through a transformation towards the emerging local ideal of emotionally open masculinity. This saw him become a more caring, dedicated, and present spouse and parent, and led to his enrollment in the HIM study as a way for caring for others. This is the way that Wentzell theorizes the lived experience of medical research participants through the analytic of “collective biologies.”
