Populations as Brands

In Populations as Brands Aaro Tupasela extends the fields of critical data studies and nation branding into the realm of state controlled biobanking and healthcare data. Using examples from two Nordic countries - Denmark and Finland – he explores how these countries have begun to market and brand their resources using methods and practices drawn from the commercial sector. Tupasela identifies changes during the past ten years that suggest that state collected and maintained resources have become the object of valuation practices. Tupasela argues that this phenomenon constitutes a novel form of nation branding in which relations between the states, individuals and the private sector are re-aligned. The author locates the historical underpinnings of population branding in the field of medical genetics starting in the early 1960s but transforming significantly during the 2010s into a professional marketing activity undertaken at multiple levels and sites. In studying thisrecent phenomenon, Tupasela provides examples of how marketing material has become increasingly professional and targeted towards a broader audience, including the public. The book will be of particular interest to scholars of critical data studies and nation branding, as well as students of science and technology studies, sociology and marketing.

“Population branding gives the Nordic States a new way to transform both their citizens and their comprehensive welfare state records into desirable assets on the global innovation market. With forensic precision and scholarly depth, Tupasela calibrates the similarities and differences between the consumer data strategies of the FANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google) and the much more contested and politicised process of State capitalisation on citizens’ health information. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Big Data studies, critical innovation and business studies, Science and Technology studies and Twenty-First century Biopolitics.” 

(Catherine Waldby, Director, Research School of Social Sciences, College of Arts & Social Sciences, The Australian National University, Australia)

“Populations as Brands examines a troubling new development in national identity promotion: the packaging of citizens’ bio-information into a global commodity. Aaro Tupasela carefully documents how state governments track, collect and market their population’s medical and health data to earn competitive advantage. Deeply researched and deftly analyzed, Populations as Brands is a striking example of the extractive power of capitalism in its relentless search for new markets. This book provokes the reader to contemplate the limits to branding amidst the privatization of public and personal goods.” 

(Dr. Melissa Aronczyk, Associate Professor, Department of Journalism & Media Studies, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, USA)

“Aaro Tupasela’s book provides an interesting view to commercialization of biomedicine from a new perspective. His multifaceted analysis of biobanking and health data sourcing in Denmark and Finland demonstrates how national populations are transformed into marketing tools and commercial assets. The picture ‘Branding populations’ paints from biomedicine impregnated bycommercial ethos is new and intriguing.” 

(Ilpo Helén, Professor of Sociology at the University of Eastern Finland, Finland)

Aaro Tupasela works as a research fellow at the Faculty of Social Science, University of Helsinki. Previously he has held positions at the Faculty of Law and The Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST) at the University of Copenhagen.