Committee Worlds

Governing Medical Research Through Ethics in the Asia-Pacific

Rachel Douglas-Jones

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English

Stanford University Press
27 January 2026

Social & cultural anthropology; Medical ethics & professional conduct; Medical research

Series: Anthropology of Policy

Medical research is a global endeavor; a complex network of international drugs trials and data collection in the pursuit of novel treatments. And the Asia-Pacific region is considered an ideal ""market"" for such trials, with large populations and good hospitals. However, to become hosts to global trials, and to export valid trial data, researchers are required to engage local research ethics committees. Supported through grants from the World Health Organization, the Forum of Ethics Review Committees of Asia and the Pacific (FERCAP) was established in 2000, and has spent the last twenty years building capacity for ethics assessment in hospitals and universities across the region. They are the translators of global ethics standards and principles for regional audiences.

Through a decade of ethnographic engagement with FERCAP, following members from their base in Thailand to workshops across Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Taiwan, and mainland China, Rachel Douglas-Jones demonstrates that research ethics committees, their material and social form, are spaces of contestation where the futures of global medical research are decided. With this book, Douglas-Jones contributes a key reference for studies of ""the committee"" upon which future work in the anthropology of policy can build. Understanding how ethics review committees do their work allows anthropologists of policy, global health, and bureaucracy to consider the values embedded in ethics as a bureaucratic practice.

By: Rachel Douglas-Jones
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781503644274
ISBN 10: 1503644278
Series: Anthropology of Policy
Pages: 216
Publication Date: 27 January 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Rachel Douglas-Jones is Associate Professor of Data and Infrastructure and Head of the Technologies in Practice Research group at the IT University of Copenhagen.

Reviews for Committee Worlds: Governing Medical Research Through Ethics in the Asia-Pacific

""Douglas-Jones has given us an ethnographically rich account of the enduring and often subtle everyday efforts that facilitate the global flow of ethics committees as ethical guidelines and manuals go on to lead social lives in different regional, national and local settings where medical research takes place. Committee Worlds eminently weaves the best of anthropologies of policy in analytical conversation with Science and Technology Studies."" --Ayo Wahlberg, University of Copenhagen ""The strength of an ethnographic sensibility has never been so apparent than in this eye-opening account of how a regional NGO created the conditions for an apparently global form of organization.Profound as a lesson in what not to take for granted, this is a brilliant response to an enquiry rarely posed: What is it to be a 'committee'?"" --Marilyn Strathern, editor of Audit Cultures