What is the political economy of science and technology?

• Broadly, the role of poltical and economic interests on the production, transmission, and use of technoscientific knowledge
• E.g.:
  legal restrictions, funding structures, trade secrets, government partnerships, globalization, …

“Knowledge economy”

• “Knowledge economy” is a way of framing technoscientific knowledge in an economic framework
• Often: economic production that depends on knowledge-intensive labor
• But also: the treatment of knowledge itself as tangible good that can be produced, traded, shared, etc.
• Knowledge has value, and is a good to be controlled

Contemporary STS:
Knowledge economy is rarely a free market

E.g. cannabis research in the U.S.

• Until very recently (2019), scentific research on cannabis was heavily restricted
• Only certain scientists were allowed to research cannabis (a ‘Schedule-1’ drug).
• Only certain research questions were allowed to be investigated (focus on the harmful effects of cannabis).
• Only one source of cannabis could be used—provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the University of Mississippi.

The Knowledge economy is at the whim of cultural, political, and legal frameworks

“Old” science

• WWII – 1980s (or later…)
• Focus on solving theoretical and technical problems
• Basis for existing scholarly disciplines
• Universities and university research seen as contributing to the public good
• Funding primarily from governments, especially military
• “Big science”
• Origin of contemporary ideals of science as a pure, disinterested enterprise

“New” science

• Focus on solving technological applications
• Encourages cross-disciplinary research
• Embraces role of non-scientists (industry, government, public) in steering research
• Funding from industry and government
• Focus on patents, corporate partnerships, and direct sources of revenue
• “Academic capitalism”

Intellectual property rights (IPR)

• Patents, trademarks, copyright, etc.
• IPR allows scientific and technological knowledge to be treated as property

Historically

• The current conception of intellectual property is relatively new.
• IPR has been around for most of the 20th century, but its role in trade and knowledge economies was not regularized until the 1980s.

Shift in scientific incentives

• Formerly: individual recognition and technical invention
• Currently: patents and profitability

Legal frameworks

• IPR often claimed to promote innovation and competition by ensuring monetary rewards for expensive or risky research
• Patents on essential drugs, biological species/genes, and ‘common knowledge’ may undermine such benefits

Global control

• 1994 TRIPS agreement enforces IPR in international trade
• Imposes Western IPR regime upon the rest of the world, restricting access to beneficial and life-saving technology
• Facilitates neocolonial exploitation

Species and genes as IP

• Current global IPR regime allows companies to patent biological organisms (e.g. plants, animals, bacteria) and specific genetic sequences (including human)
• Controversial in part because patent extends to offspring of organisms
  E.g. Monsando’s “roundup ready” seeds

Bioprospecting & biopiracy

• Bioprospectors seek out commercially valuable species and genetic material (e.g. seeds and plants)
• Often use traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples to identify such material, but claim ownership through patents

Technoscience and state-making

• Tools of science and technology are fundamental to (neo)colonial processes of global control
• Regulation, trade, inter-state dependency allow powerful states to dictate what counts as legitimate knowledge

Traditional (Indigenous) knowledge

• Global IPR regime controlls specific technologies, but also a model of what knowledge is.
  Knowlege that is not owned, isolated, and Modern is not considered legitimate (e.g. Adams 2002)
• Indigenous technologies and categories redefined through the lens of Modern, Western science