Bioprospecting Networks and Biotech Knowledge Economies

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

Abstract

Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, this paper traces and analyzes the stories and claims accompanying bioprospecting research practices in Panama’s changing political and economic landscape. I examine the competitive and collaborative efforts that buttress scientific knowledge production among natural products researchers and advocates of science who are working to leverage Panama’s biodiversity and emerging biotech sector. Bioprospecting or “natural products research” refers to the interdisciplinary work of scientists who seek potent chemical compounds for future drug development. In this multi-scalar, ethnographic study of bioprospecting, I explore the multiple meanings of scientific innovation, the circulation of knowledge, and the inter-institutional ecology assembling in the Republic of Panama to articulate a state-of-the-art, global scientific hub in today ‘s growing knowledge economy. My paper also examines how today's knowledge economy along with new conceptualizations and practices in bioprospecting science have ushered in changes in scientific knowledge production, particularly as Latin American scientists experience increased international mobility to develop expertise. I offer new insights of the processes of scientific knowledge production that push back on knowledge circulation as a social scientific model for understanding: 1) the assembling of institutions and the procuring of financial arrangements to fund scientific research; and 2) the imaginings and rematerialization of biodiversity, networks, ecology, and life. How are scientists changing bioprospecting practices and how are these changing practices impacting, and impacted by, the financial arrangements surrounding scientists? What are the funding sources? Are they public, private, mixed? How do various interests create these economic and scientific arrangements?

Author

• Alberto Eduardo Morales, University of California Irvine