Technoscientific Rent I

Session Submission Type: Traditional (Closed) Panel

Abstract

As an increasing number of 'things' (e.g. infrastructure, student debt, medical care, personal data, sunlight, etc.) are turned into assets, it is necessary to work out how value is appropriated from those assets through new forms of 'rentiership' (or rent-seeking). Often presented as the dark side of innovation and entrepreneurship, rent-seeking comes in many forms, including: government fiat (e.g. GHG emissions); monopoly (e.g. intellectual property); organizational arrangements (e.g. business models); and market configurations (e.g. value chains and networks). It is necessary, however, to move beyond the assumptions built into both Marxist and neoclassical economic literatures that rent-seeking is a problematic activity that distorts or corrupts the ‘naturalized’ working of capitalism or free markets. Instead, the purpose of this open panel is to consider these different forms of rentiership as they relate to different forms of technoscience in order to unpack the concept analytically and empirically and its relevance to science, technology, and innovation politically and normatively. The panel welcomes papers on different forms of rentiership in technoscience, different conceptions of rentiership drawing on Marxist, neoclassical, and other traditions, and discussions of the analytical, political, and normative usefulness of rentiership as a concept.

Sub Unit

• 4S Annual Meeting

Chair

• Kean Birch, York University

Individual Presentations

• Technoscience Rent: An Analytical Introduction to the Concept - Kean Birch, York University

• Value and the Distribution of Proximity: The Autorickshaw Meter and Regimes of Location - William F Stafford Jr, UC Berkeley, Dept of Anthropology

• Technoscience Rents and the STS (Insensibilities) of Monopoly and Market Configurations. - ASHISH N.A GOSAIN, Centre for Studies in Science Policy, Jawaharlal Nehru University

• Building the Market Society: How Markets are Justified in Everyday Life - Lawrence Busch, Michigan State University