The politics of genetic technoscience for conservation: The case of blight-resistant American chestnut
The politics of genetic technoscience for conservation: The case of blight-resistant American chestnut
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DOI：
10.1177/25148486211024910
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发表时间：
2021-06-24
影响因子：
2.9
通讯作者：
Delborne, Jason A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Barnes, Jessica C.;Delborne, Jason A.
遗传学和基因组学方面的创新受到了严厉批评，认为它们是广泛支持自然资源私有化和商品化的技术。然而，这些工具在生态恢复方面的新兴应用挑战了将基因技术科学描述为不可避免地参与新自由主义资本主义的制定和扩展的叙述。在这篇文章中，我们借鉴了兰登·温纳的技术政治理论，认为基因技术开发和部署的背景对其政治结果至关重要。我们描述了如何通过遗传方法恢复功能性灭绝的美国板栗树--由非营利性组织实施，用于恢复野生的遗产森林物种，并采用非传统的知识产权保护--在植物生物技术的政治经济学中是如何挑战先例的。通过参与者观察、对科学家的采访和历史分析，我们利用卡尔·波兰尼的双重运动提供的理论镜头来描述美国板栗抗疫树开发商的预期和代理，结合板栗生物学和恢复背景，到目前为止，抵制板栗种质遗传私有化和商品化的关键形式。尽管如此，抗枯萎病的美国栗树的政治仍然不完整和不确定；因此，我们呼吁学者们利用技术和新自由主义的不均衡和社会构建的特点，帮助塑造基因技术科学在保护方面的这一和其他应用。
Innovations in genetics and genomics have been heavily critiqued as technologies that have widely supported the privatization and commodification of natural resources. However, emerging applications of these tools to ecological restoration challenge narratives that cast genetic technoscience as inevitably enrolled in the enactment and extension of neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, we draw on Langdon Winner's theory of technological politics to suggest that the context in which genetic technologies are developed and deployed matters for their political outcomes. We describe how genetic approaches to the restoration of functionally extinct American chestnut trees-by non-profit organizations, for the restoration of a wild, heritage forest species, and with unconventional intellectual property protections-are challenging precedents in the political economy of plant biotechnology. Through participant observation, interviews with scientists, and historical analysis, we employ the theoretical lens provided by Karl Polanyi's double movement to describe how the anticipations and agency of the developers of blight-resistant American chestnut trees, combined with chestnut biology and the context of restoration, have thus far resisted key forms of the genetic privatization and commodification of chestnut germplasm. Still, the politics of blight-resistant American chestnut remain incomplete and undetermined; we thus call upon scholars to use the uneven and socially constructed character of both technologies and neoliberalism to help shape this and other applications of genetic technoscience for conservation.