Valuing the Infrastructure: Assetization of Bio-Resources in Japan

• In Event: Organizing Technoscientific Capitalism: Epistemic Values, Practices & Assets - I

Abstract

In the early 2000s, the Japanese government turned itself as a key stakeholder in advancement of science and technology in the country, and launched several large-scale national projects, including those on stem cell science (Mikami 2015) and structural genomics (Fukushima 2015). And one such project was the National Bio-Resource Project (NBRP). This project differs from others in that it does not aim to produce scientific knowledge or to develop novel technology: instead, it builds research infrastructure that serves primarily for the community of life science researchers in the country.
In this paper, I examine the relationship between the way this national project is evaluated and the practices that aimed to enhance its value. It was launched initially as a five-year project, and just like other research projects, it needed to demonstrate its value to justify the investment the government made in order to continue beyond the five-year period. However, this turned out to be a rather challenging task for those involved in it, not because frequently used indicators for research projects, like a number of publications and patents, were considered inappropriate, but because they have to be of those who made use of resource(s) supplied by the project. Based on a series of interviews with those who oversee the overall project and also those who manage each resource, I argue that the evaluation of this infrastructure serves to facilitate its assetization, stabilizing its value as a source of future benefits for the country (Birch 2016).

Author

• Koichi Mikami, Keio University