Series Abstract: This series develops the concept of biodata capitalism: the emerging regime in which bodily materials including tissue, DNA, microbes, and feces, are captured, analyzed, and turned into assets for prediction, surveillance, governance, and profit. Following the toilet, lab, and sewer, these essays trace how fecal matter becomes diagnostic input, pharmaceutical substrate, and a tool of population monitoring. The first article, “Flush with Data: Mapping Fecal Biodata Capitalism," maps the technical infrastructures that make this possible: wastewater surveillance, microbiome testing, stool banks, and smart toilets. The second article, “Biodata Capitalism, After the Flush: Privacy, Profit, and the Vanishing Biocommons," turns to implications: the rise of sanitary surveillance, the unpaid clinical labor of donors whose bodies feed pharmaceutical pipelines, and the erosion of the public health commons as bespoke, privately owned “preventive wellness” replaces collective care. Together, the series asks: what happens when excretion becomes a data economy?
Series Editor: Tina Guirguis
