Abstract
This chapter explores how biotechnologies are incorporated into everyday aspects of caring for ourselves and others. It also explores some recent studies of both biotechnology and care taking, often using examples from the work of peripherally located settings and southern scholarship, reflecting interests in local biologies and in voice and dominance in the field of medical anthropology itself. After discussing key terms of biotechnologies and care, the chapter briefly reflects on the field's broadening scope before concentrating on four specific sites of practice: communities, hospitals, embodied contexts, and public discourse. For decades ethnographic research has provided opportunities to explore the lived experiences of engaging with biotechnologies. At the level of individuals, biotechnologies combine in interesting and unexpected ways with humans creating a type of materially dispersed, yet interconnecting subjectivity, sometimes likened to cyborg embodiment.