Ghosts in the Shell: an anthropological investigation on DIYbio and the Cyborg.

• In Event: Science and Activism: Transdisciplinary Approaches

Abstract

This paper seeks to bring the recent data from my postdoctoral research, which seeks to investigate the practices known as DIYbio or Do it yourself Biology. The theme is the theory, practice, and conceptions of science in relation to DIYbio, from where I have been developing an investigation about the problem that is placed in this practice that seems to raise the question about the place considered as necessary to realize 'science' and its applications in the human body. The acronym refers to laboratories, quasi-laboratories, and facilities without state financial resources and without effective funding links, assembled by independent researchers of the current funding networks. This movement began in mid-2000 in many places such as the US, Europe, Japan, Brazil and the main idea is that such researchers seek to create ways to use and share technologies within the concepts and practices already used by hackers and bio-hackers; for example, open-access information, cyber countermeasures, prostheses and robotic implants, use of synthetic substances, DNA analysis, among other actions. This research is being done through ethnographic fieldwork in laboratories and quasi-laboratories, university facilities, events, literature review and through the monitoring of DIY and DIYBio processes in Brazil and Japan. About the participation in this panel, my work can bring data and ways of thinking the intersections between science and activism, helping to reflect on the new perspectives on science, its epistemology, and its practices.
Keywords - Anthropology, Body, Japanese Culture, Japan, Cyberculture, DIYbio, Science.

Authors

• Gil Vicente Nagai Lourencao, State University of Campinas - UNICAMP

• Marko Monteiro, State University of Campinas