The Bioeconomy, Biocapital and the New Regime of Science-based Innovation

Abstract

In this chapter, a number of central terms and concepts, developed and used both within and outside of the biopharmaceutical industry, and part of the analytical framework used in the empirical chapters of the books, will be discussed. The literature reviewed in this chapter is highly diverse and includes a variety of social science disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, organization theory, science and technology studies and philosophy. This rather heterogeneous body of literature shares an interest in what Rose (2007) calls the bioeconomy, a broad but useful term denoting an economic regime wherein the biopharmaceutical industry and its accompanying and supporting life sciences play a central role for not only the economic system, in terms of the share of GNP, but also socially and culturally as a predominant paradigm. The twentieth century was, in Bauman’s (2005) characterization, constituted by ‘solids’, immutable engineered artefacts and technological systems such as automobiles, highways, skyscrapers and aeroplanes that helped define the modern period: