Hematopolitics: Blood Donation and Contested Belonging in East Asia

Blood offers a uniquely valuable lens through which to understand contemporary social relationships due to its powerful symbolic associations and its fundamental role in healthcare. This research posits blood donation as a privileged site for comprehending social transformation in diversifying and ageing societies that struggle to meet rising demands for transfusions. Focusing on Japan and South Korea, where blood has strong symbolic power in relation to kinship, nationhood and pollution, this research asks how national identity and social relationships are imagined and contested through blood donation. This extends the existing parameters of social analyses of blood donation, which have tended to focus on altruism and social solidarity. Instead of limiting its inquiry to individuals’ motivations to donate blood or the strong bond this creates, this research asks how blood donation conjures up concepts of social boundaries around implicit understandings of who should donate to whom and why. By employing a new framework – hematopolitics – this research highlights the mundane processes through which these boundaries are drawn and challenged by blood donors, health professionals, patients and larger publics. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the micropolitical contestations over belonging to imagined and embodied collectives around shared pools of blood.

Working with partner organizations and collaborators across the UK, Korea and Japan, the project implements a number of public engagement activities, including textile blood bag making workshops, a special exhibition and a children’s booklet on blood donation and transfusion. 

This project builds on previous projects funded by the Wellcome Trust and the White Rose University Consortium.

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