The Good Economy: From What The Bioeconomy Is To What The Bioeconomy Does

• In Event: Bioeconomies - Life, Technologies, and Capital in the 21st Century I: Frictions, Values and Prospective Markets Across Global Bioeoconomies

Abstract

The bioeconomy is now both a theoretical concept and an empirical object for STS scholars. This warrants caution. For the bioeconomy, as a promissory construct, does not so much describe an external reality as it seeks to work upon it and modify it – and, possibly, also works upon us as scholars taking up the term critically. How then to approach it analytically and theoretically? Taking our cue from Charis Thompson’s notion of ‘good science’, we propose ‘the good economy’ in order to carve out an academic space to approach this new economy, a space that is not already predefined – neither by the strategies and actors we want to observe and understand, nor by on-going scholarly debate. In fact, in keeping simply with the notion ‘bioeconomy’, we risk taking for granted precisely what we need to investigate: namely what kind of economy this is, what it does and with which means. Seeking to move beyond (if ever much needed) mapping of what the bioeconomy is and claims about how to study it correctly, we set out to examine how this new economy involves valuation practices in sciences, in markets and in policy – valuing life, the biological and resources in different and sometimes thoroughly conflictual ways. To study what the bioeconomy does, we first sketch a genealogy of the concept; then, we analyze coexisting versions of the bioeconomy as they appear in the EU, OECD and Norwegian strategies; and we relate this programmatic reflection to a series of ongoing empirical investigations.

Authors

• Kristin Asdal, TIK, Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture

• Béatrice Cointe, University of Oslo

• Bård Hobæk, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo

• Tone Huse, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo

• Tommas Måløy, TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo