Article ID: CBB114385437

Microbiology and the Imperatives of Capital in International Agro-Biodiversity Preservation (2018)

unapi

This essay considers the political economy of transnational scientific research based on global collection of biota for laboratory manipulation, focusing on a program to develop pest-resistant wheat using fungal endophytes common in a range of wild but closely related grasses. This effort extends long-standing efforts to commoditize living substances of increasing scope and complexity, and it is supported by efforts to collect and preserve biological diversity. The essay explores how imperatives of capital shape biodiversity as a policy category and determine which forms of life are saved, materially altering our records of life on earth. These newly legible and malleable organisms become more perfect commodities, suitable for standardization and transmutation into finance capital. Yet endophytes are also of interest in part because of their resistance to such control, throwing into sharp relief the reductive imperatives of commoditization while also provoking new ways of justifying capital accumulation and flow. This essay questions the extent to which histories of capitalism and science as conjoined projects rooted in the biological species concept can explain contemporary practices of biodiversity preservation and the microbiological research they support. Microbiological research provides new renderings of life on earth that may challenge or reconfigure metaphors and practices common to capitalism and science.

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Article Lukas Rieppel; Eugenia Lean; William Deringer (2018) Introduction: The Entangled Histories of Science and Capitalism. Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 1-24). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB114385437/

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Authors & Contributors
Franco Sotte
Katja Bruisch
Benjamin W. Goossen
Johnson, Alison F.
Tvedt, Terje
Sung, Wen-Ching
Concepts
Science and economics
Science and politics
Capitalism
Globalization; internationalization
Cold War
Agriculture
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
Modern
20th century
Places
United States
Southern Europe
Eastern Europe
Serbia
Russia
Europe
Institutions
Science for the People (SftP)
Beijing Genomics Institute
International Geophysical Year (IGY)
Human Genome Project
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