Abstract
This chapter examines how U.S.-based visions of biotechnological potential, undergirded by narratives of biological and economic progress, contribute to shaping technological innovation, policy, and politics at the international level. The invocation of “science-based” markets and policies is put to work in diverse instances to create conditions of potentiality for a particular vision of future good—the bioeconomy. The chapter discusses techniques for the creation of international markets for biotechnologies, as well as the modes of measurement and obfuscation leveraged in their validation and discursive construction as universally beneficial, placeless, and disembodied technologies.
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Notes
- 1.
Carlson was also referred to as the best source of empirical data on the bioeconomy by one of the authors of the U.S. National Bioeconomy Blueprint, during a breakout session of the workshop on Research Agendas in the Societal Aspects of Synthetic Biology, November 2014, Tempe, AZ.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Ben Hurlbut for guidance and careful reading of early drafts of this chapter, and to the editors of this collection for their insightful comments.
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Doezema, T. (2019). Globalizing Technologies: Geopolitical Innovation in the U.S. Bioeconomy. In: Lösch, A., Grunwald, A., Meister, M., Schulz-Schaeffer, I. (eds) Socio-Technical Futures Shaping the Present. Technikzukünfte, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft / Futures of Technology, Science and Society. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-27155-8_5
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