Rethinking donated blood with an ontological approach: mapping out the flow of Flemish donor-blood and its multiple enactments in practice

While public policies advocate national blood-donation systems based on voluntary non-remunerated donation, current scholarship has questioned the contemporary relevance of this gift-model. Technical innovations, such as blood-fractioning, allow a donated blood-unit to be broken down into different components that can be used for multiple purposes, ranging from transfusion medicine over the manufacturing of plasma-derived medicinal products to human genome research in both public and private bio-industrial contexts. As techno-scientific processing renders blood an increasing biovalue after donation, non-economic blood-donation has been integrated in a global network of bio-economic relations. This has urged scholars to reflect on the shifting meanings and values of blood and blood-donation within a globalized blood-economy. This paper contrasts different conceptualizations of donor-blood in social science research on blood-donation. While some authors stress the metaphorical, moral or social value of donated blood, others argue that the techno-scientific and partially marketized deployment of donor-blood turned it into a bulk-commodity and that, subsequently, a volunteer-based system for blood collection is outdated. Taking these divergent perspectives into account, this paper suggests an ontological approach towards the materiality of blood and its multiple meanings and values. By mapping out the flow of Flemish donor-blood, we explore where and how different ontologies of blood are enacted in practice. The Flemish Red Cross blood-bank is thereby identified as a strategic site in the co-ordination of different practice-specific enactments of blood, bracketing out conflicting versions of donor-blood in their communication towards (potential) voluntary non-remunerated donors on blood-donation as ‘a gift of life’