Pharmaceuticals in the Capitalocene: on the metabolic exploitation of life and bodies in the capitalist world-ecology

Drawing on research in environmental humanities and critical agrarian studies, this article seeks to explore the role that drugs play in the world-ecology of capitalism. We propose a “political ecology of pharmaceuticals” by approaching their transformational effects on bodies and lives – through their very capacity to reshape the metabolism of both human and non-human life. Industrial pharmaceuticals, we argue, actively participate in the capitalist process of appropriation, stimulation, and adaptation of the very fabric of life. They partake in a metabolic exploitation of life, without which the world-ecology of capitalism would not be as efficient and resilient. We highlight three dimensions of this process. The first dimension concerns the significant role pharmaceuticals played in colonization – drawing on the examples of antimalarial drugs and treatments for sleeping sickness. In the second part, we argue that the productivist model and the ongoing intensification of labor at the heart of the Capitalocene could never have been sustained at such a global scale without pharmaceuticals—as illustrated by both the industrial farming of animals and the medicalization of precarious workers in the agro-industrial world. Finally, the third dimension concerns the role pharmaceuticals play in adapting to – and sustaining – the degraded world of the Capitalocene.