The discussion about the impact of agricultural biotechnology on Africa is deeply divided and contains widely diverging claims about the impact of biotechnology on African farmers. Building upon literature on the ‘good farmer’ that highlights that farmers identities are an important factor in explaining the success or failure of agricultural change, we argue that the identity of the farmer is an undervalued yet crucial aspect for understanding the debate about the impact of agricultural biotechnology on African farmers. In this article (...) we therefore investigate what farmers’ identities are implicated in the arguments about the impact of biotechnology on African farmers. We aim to identify the main fault lines in different accounts of the African biotechnology farmer by analysing the identities ascribed to them in two prominent cases of controversy: the debates at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg and the discussion about the impact of biotechnology on smallholder farmers in the Makhathini flats in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Our findings demonstrate that arguments about biotechnology are informed by diverging conceptions of who the African farmer is, what is important for the African farmer, and what role the African farmer has in relation to agricultural biotechnology. These findings remain relevant for current discussions on gene editing technologies like CRISPR-Cas. Openly discussing these different views on the identity of smallholder farmers is crucial for moving forward in the biotechnology controversy and can inform future attempts to elicit the farmer’s voice. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate about how regulatory science for agricultural technologies can be ‘opened up’ for a more diverse set of concerns and knowledges. The article focuses on the regulation of ‘socio-economic considerations’ for genetically modified organisms. While numerous countries have declared their intent to include these considerations in biotechnology decision-making, it is currently unclear both what counts as a socio-economic consideration and how such considerations should be assessed. This article provides greater clarity about how socio-economic considerations can (...) be included in regulations by drawing upon the experience of two countries whose efforts in this field are particularly advanced: Kenya and South Africa. Based on extensive fieldwork, this article identifies the contours of an emerging regulatory regime by presenting two practice-based models for including socio-economic considerations in biotechnology decision-making. Whereas Kenya has taken a bottom-up process prior to assessing the first technologies and strongly emphasises scientific expertise, South Africa has instead established regulatory standards in an ad hoc fashion on a case-to-case basis, with a less prominent role for scientific evidence. The discussion of the distinct characteristics and tensions of both models provides insight into two potential pathways for including socio-economic considerations in the regulation of agricultural technologies. (shrink)

Scale is central to understanding nanotechnologies. These technologies are usually described as the understanding and control of matter at the nanoscale, with one nanometer being 10^-9 meter. At this scale, some materials gain new properties that can be used in the creation of new products. These properties may contribute to economic growth and social welfare but, conversely, they may also create negative effects, such as new risks to human health and the environment. As an emerging field whose consequences are still (...) uncertain, the meanings of nanotechnologies are hotly contested. (shrink)

This article explores the relation between innovation and resources that are governed as commons by looking at the governance of potato genetic resources, especially in the context of the emergence ofhybrid diploid potato breedingthat will enable potato propagation through true seeds. As a new breeding tool, hybrid diploid potato breeding may not only revolutionize traditional potato breeding practices, it may also strongly affect current governance modes of potato genetic resources as a commons. Contrary to conventional accounts of the commons that (...) treat technological innovation mainly as an exogenous factor, we argue that technological innovation can better be understood as an endogenous factor. In particular, we develop aco-production frameworkof innovation and the commons that draws attention to the different ways in which innovation, commons and its governance interact. Using this framework, we demonstrate that the constitution of potato genetic resources as a commons cannot be understood without considering the various ways in which technological innovation affects resources and mediate how these are governed. While reversely, technological innovations themselves are also enabled and constrained by users who govern potato genetic resources as a shared resource. We argue that changes in the governance of genetic resources can be understood as a change from one socio-technical constellation to another, whereby innovations, resources, and institutions are continuously co-produced. (shrink)

Emerging technologies like nanotechnologies are governed in different ways around the world. This article draws attention to an important element that can help to explain the emergence of this diversity in governance practices: the role of nanotechnology in nation-building. By investigating the relation between nanotechnology and the nation in India, the article demonstrates that various particularities of the Indian governance of nanotechnology can be explained by the relation between science, technology, and nation-building. The article discusses four instances in which the (...) governance of nanotechnology in India is informed by the role science and technology has in nation-building: the historical image of India as a country that can attain modernity and development by engaging with modern science and technology supported the government’s decision to free funds for nanotechnology research; the view of India as a country that cannot rely on foreign assistance to get access to the latest technologies reinforced the strategy to pro-actively pursue nanotechnology research and development itself; the historical use of science and technology as crucial elements in overcoming deeply rooted societal divisions enabled the science-centered way in which nanotechnology was governed; and the Indian ambition to become a global superpower informed the governance of nanotechnology as an object of international competition. The governance of nanotechnology in turn defines ‘Indianness’ in a post-liberalization world. (shrink)