Abstract
The development of biotechnology and agrobiodiversity and food diversity influence each other mutually. In this contribution the development of (agro-industrial) biotechnology is analyzed as being shaped and shaping the social conflict on the emergence of agro-industrial food chains. It is argued that biotechnology is related to a spatial transformation of agro/food production, strengthening three historical processes of separation and establishing new techniques of governing human and particularly scientific workers (immaterial labor). It is argued that biotechnological products—seeds, enzymes, biocatalysts and microbiological produced food components—are politicizing products creating new social relations in global food systems and establishing a new biopower system, shifting politics from policy-makers to the domain of science and technology.
However, it is also argued that the emergence of this new system of biopower through the politicization of biotechnological products embedded in the spatial reorganization of food production is challenged, it is suggested, by the development of a space to maneuver with multiple practices of resistance, transforming the politicizing products of biopower into catalysts for multiple, location-specific developments. The contribution concludes by reflecting on these practices of resistance and rewriting the embodied political content of agro-industrial biotechnology and to transform it into tailor-made biotechnologies related to the perspectives of agrobiodiversity and food diversity. Conversely, the contribution focuses on the question whether and in which ways a critical-reconstructive approach can be applied to agro/food biotechnology.
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Notes
- 1.
Ruivenkamp (1997).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Vroom (2009).
- 5.
See Ruivenkamp (1986) for an analysis of the characteristic historical phases of this agricultural-to-synthetic substitution process.
- 6.
Ruivenkamp (1989).
- 7.
Ruivenkamp (1986).
- 8.
Infra.
- 9.
These processes have been going on since time immemorial, but the changing face and especially biotechnologization of agriculture has given them a qualitatively new significance.
- 10.
Kloppenburg (1988).
- 11.
Virno (2004).
- 12.
- 13.
Rana (2000).
- 14.
Ruivenkamp (2008).
- 15.
Since 1999 an international network (Tailor-Made biotechnologies for Endogenous developments) has been working on facilitating an information exchange among various practices of tailoring biotechnologies to location-specific networks in various countries. One of the initiatives has been a common research project of twelve PhD researchers from Ecuador, Ghana and India to investigate opportunities for strengthening the social transformative power of location-specific food products as lupine (Ecuador), cowpea (Ghana, Benin) and mungbean (India) by attuned tailor-made biotechnological developments. Some results of these initiatives are represented in four documentaries included in the book “Biotechnology-in-development: Experiences form the South” Ruivenkamp (2008).
- 16.
Magnaghi (2000), p. 78.
- 17.
Ruivenkamp (2008).
- 18.
Galimberti (2003), p. 685.
- 19.
Van der Ploeg (2008).
- 20.
- 21.
Ruivenkamp (2005).
- 22.
Hardt and Negri (2004).
- 23.
Ruivenkamp (2008).
- 24.
Ruivenkamp (2008).
- 25.
In the sociology and philosophy of technology, there is an intensive debate on the concept of “socio-technical code” in technology that has been stimulated among others by the article of Langdon Winner (1985) “Do artefacts have politics” and followed by debates and analyses of Noble, Feenberg, Ruivenkamp, etc.. In general terms the code concept indicates that technologies are developed within a cultural horizon (Feenberg 1999), specified by the socio-cultural assumptions grounding and directing their development and from which ‘the politics in technologies’ is practiced.
- 26.
Latour (2005).
- 27.
- 28.
Latour (2005).
- 29.
Benkler (2006).
- 30.
Delfanti (2013), p. 112.
- 31.
Golinelli and Ruivenkamp (2015).
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Ruivenkamp, G. (2018). Genetically Modified Organisms as Politicizing Products?. In: Isoni, A., Troisi, M., Pierri, M. (eds) Food Diversity Between Rights, Duties and Autonomies. LITES - Legal Issues in Transdisciplinary Environmental Studies, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75196-2_3
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