"Bioeconomies: life, technology and capital in the 21st century"
The Care and Preparedness in the Network Society (CareNet) research group of the IN3 organises a research seminar by Vincenzo Pavone, head scientist at the Institute of Public Policies (IPP) of the Department of Science and Innovation of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and IN3 Visiting Scholar.
During this seminar the speaker will present an edited volume, published by Palgrave, that addresses some many emerging bioeconomies (Bioeconomies: life, technology and capital in the 21st century). The book explores the promissory discourses and practices associated with the bioeconomy, focusing especially on the transformation of institutions; the creation, appropriation, and distribution of value; the struggle over resources, power, and meaning; and the role of altruism, kinship, and care practices. Governments and science enthusiasts worldwide are embracing the bioeconomy, championing it as the key to health, wealth, and sustainability, while citing it as justification to transform research and regulatory institutions, health and agricultural practices, ethics of privacy and ownership, and conceptions of self and kin. Drawing together studies from Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe, this volume encompasses subjects as diverse as regenerative medicine, population health research, agricultural finance, biobanking, assisted reproduction, immigration, breastfeeding, self-help groups, GM fish, and mining sewage.
Venue
Room Tony Bates, UOC building
Av. Tibidabo, 39-43
08035 Barcelona
Espanya
When
18/07/2017 16.00h
Organized by
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, CareNet research group of the IN3
Program
A young woman in Barcelona, unemployed for the past two years, waits at a private fertility clinic to be screened as an egg donor; she calculates how far she can make the thousand-Euro payment go. A 10-year-old boy in Kakuma refugee camp reads a letter from his mother, who once thought him dead; now resettled in Australia, she writes that the Australian government requires that they prove their relationship through expensive DNA tests, which might take her years to save for. A scientist in Finland resists pressure to permit an unknown but well-funded researcher access to the collection of painstakingly obtained and documented tissue samples that form the basis of her research. An agricultural contractor in Argentina monitors the international market price of GM soy and considers whether investing in a more advanced harvester would improve his competitiveness. These brief snapshots reveal moments in the expanding web of relations increasingly being conceptualized as a bioeconomy, or as multiple bioeconomies.
Vincenzo Pavone is the head scientist at the Institute of Public Policies (IPP) of the Department of Science and Innovation of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). A trained political expert, for the past 10 years he’s been working in two main subject areas: CTS (Science, Technology and Society) and political economy. In recent years he has been closely studying the neoliberal transformations in the academy and the spread of bioeconomies on a global scale. Together with Joanna Goven, he’s just published the book Bioeconomies: life, technology and capital in the 21st century by Palgrave.