Michael S Carolan
Biographic Data
| ID | 246104 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael S Carolan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael S |
| FAMILY NAME | Carolan |
| SIGNATURE | CAROLAN M S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Colorado State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 448 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Michael Carolan's Embodied Food Politics
The Wild Side of Agro-food Studies: On Co-experimentation, Politics, Change, and Hope
Noting that the field of agro-food studies has undergone numerous 'turns' over the years, this article first seeks to make sense of this evolving literature by examining aspects of the metaphysical foreground upon which this 'turning' takes place. Doing this highlights a coalescing of sorts within the field; a movement the author describes as being less toward a specific theoretical framework as it is around a general way of doing agro-food schol…
Ethanol’s most recent breakthrough in the United States: A case of socio-technical transition
The Mutability of Biotechnology Patents: From Unwieldy Products of Nature to Independent ‘Object/s’
This article details how patent law works to create discrete, immutable biological 'objects'. This socio-legal maneuver is necessary to distinguish these artifacts from the unwieldy (and thus unpatentable) realm of the natural world. The creation of 'objects' also serves the interests of capital, where a stable, unchanging, immutable object goes hand in hand with commodification. Yet this stabilization is incomplete. Pointing to a variety of diff…
XIV. Towards A Process Oriented Sociological Imagination: Linking Conceptions of Nature with Social Change and Practice
Process Sub-politics: Placing Empirical Flesh on Whiteheadian Thought
This paper is more explorative than programmatic. It attempts to place empirical flesh on some of Alfred North Whitehead's speculative thoughts on concrete apprehensions. The challenge lies in the fact that Whitehead was vague on the subject. While Whitehead offers numerous thoughts on why we mistake the abstract for the concrete he wrote considerably less on how we can get ourselves to think more concretely. I therefore examine an empirical case…
This Is Not a Biodiversity Hotspot”: The Power of Maps and Other Images in the Environmental Sciences
Maps and images have power; they are neither neutral nor unproblematic with respect to issues of representation. Representation is not reality; to conflate the two is to risk naturalizing the assumptions silently embedded within these images. This article begins by reviewing the literature that explores the uneasy relationship between maps and the reality they are said to represent, with particular focus placed on those works examining maps withi…
Ethanol versus Gasoline: The Contestation and Closure of a Socio-technical System in the USA
A variety of forces aligned at the turn of the last century to make ethyl alcohol--what is today known as ethanol--inefficient and uneconomical as a fuel alternative. Rather than a case of inevitable technological unfolding, the transition from King Coal to Big Oil was a sociologically contingent event. As a controversy study, this paper seeks to avoid the reductionist tendencies of past historical analyses of fuel. The author also seeks to redre…
Genetically Modified Diplomacy: The Global Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment
I do therefore there is: Enlivening Socio-Environmental Theory
Socio-environmental theory needs to be enlivened, to be made with bodies – literally – in mind. Experiences of nature do not always fit neatly within categories of reason and rationality. Embodied knowledge plays a significant role in shaping how we think about nature. Following a brief overview of some literature on embodiment, to place 'flesh' on this argument, case studies, ethnographies and the like are examined to clarify the idea that we th…
The Problems with Patents: A Less than Optimistic Reading of the Future
This article examines a number of problems associated with patents. These are aspects of patents (and patent law) that are masked by conventional discourse that frequently equates strong patent protections with innovation and, ultimately, economic growth. This article will discuss: patents' links with knowledge and expertise; infrastructural requirements; innovation incentive structures; coercive tendencies (via high litigation and transactions c…
A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Ethanol in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century and Lessons for Today
This article develops a broad sociological understanding of why biofuels lost out to leaded gasoline as the fuel par excellence of the twentieth century, while drawing comparisons with biofuels today. It begins by briefly discussing the fuel-scape in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining the farm chemurgic movement, New Deal agricultural policies, mechanization trends within agriculture, and, finally, t…
Making Patents and Intellectual Property Work: The Asymmetrical “Harmonization” of TRIPS
Patents are a performance , in both their creation and subsequent enactions. They require skill, tacit/embodied knowledge, and practice if they are to be successfully enacted. Western intellectual property law, however, is blind to the performative aspect of patents. This sociolegal reality has helped to create significant asymmetries between nations, particularly after the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS…
Constructing the “pure” inventor: Individual, collective, and corporate authorship within patent law
This paper details how patent law purifies “the” inventing subject of big science while simultaneously disqualifying others from patent eligibility for practicing a similar form of collective authorship. The author begins by detailing what is known as the romantic author trope – the assumption within (Western) patent law that invention is the product of one (versus many). The romantic author trope, however, runs counter to the (collective) invent…
Is It a Distinct Subspecies? Preble's Mouse and the “Best Available Science” Mandate of the Endangered Species Act
This article examines the debate that surrounds the Preble's meadow jumping mouse listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While policymakers and politicians have been looking toward science to provide a resolution to this debate, this article argues that science alone cannot provide the answers we seek in this case. Two components of the ESA are first examined, which will allow us to conceptually make sense of the Preble's mouse controver…
Precautionary Politics: Principle and Practice in Confronting Environmental Risk
Democratizing Knowledge: Sustainable and Conventional Agricultural Field Days as Divergent Democratic Forms
This article highlights that in our rush to call for the democratization of science and expertise we must not forget to speak to what type of democratization we are calling for. In short, not all participatory forms are the same. In developing this argument, I examine one such form that has yet to receive much attention from science and technology studies scholars: the agricultural field day. In examining the field day, we find that its orientati…
From patent law to regulation: The Ontological Gerrymandering of Biotechnology
Biotechnology is (ontologically speaking) many things. US patent law's understanding of 'the natural' has shrunk over the decades to allow the patenting of artefacts – such as organisms, cell lines, chemical compounds, and cDNA – that would previously have been unpatentable. However, when attempting to garner public support or minimise regulatory hurdles, proponents of biotechnology emphasise how these artefacts are no different from their un-eng…
More-than-Representational Knowledge/s of the Countryside: How We Think as Bodies
The empirical hypothesis that is explored in this article is: if we think with our bodies then we must think about the countryside with our bodies too. Working toward this end, the article begins by briefly reviewing the literature on embodied knowledge. From here, attention turns to the rough, empirical ground of everyday life. Before doing this, however, discussion centres briefly on methods, where the methodological implications of studying th…
The politics in environmental science: The Endangered Species Act and the Preble's mouse controversy
Environmental science presupposes value judgements. Calls for sound, objective science are examined in the context of the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the controversy that surrounds the listing of Preble's mouse as a ‘threatened’ subspecies. Following an overview of this debate, its status as a controversy that can be resolved by objective knowledge alone is problematised by examining the normative underpinnings of species classifications,…
When Good Smells Go Bad: A Sociohistorical Understanding of Agricultural Odor Pollution
In this paper, I seek to add to the sociological and geographical literature on odor by documenting the processes through which perceptions of agricultural odors are mediated and contested. Specifically, its empirical focus is on how residents living near a large-scale hog facility within the state of Iowa actively 'do' smell. In doing this, this papers draws not only from the historical, anthropological, and sociological literature on odor, but …
The Bright- and Blind-Spots of Science: Why Objective Knowledge is not Enough to Resolve Environmental Controversies
This article investigates why science often does not speak with one voice within the context of environmental controversies. I argue that sociologists must be willing to turn to those processes and phenomena that are internal to science. In doing this, we find that many environmental conflicts are products, at least in part, of science itself. What is it about science that helps to breed these conflicts? In answering this question, this article f…
The Precautionary Principle and Traditional Risk Assessment: Rethinking How We Assess and Mitigate Environmental Threats
The article begins by problematizing the risk assessment and precautionary principle frameworks. From here, attention turns toward the development of an alternative, more holistic, scheme for assessing and mitigating environmental threats. Recognizing that the assessment and mitigation of environmental threats is a multilayered process, discussion centers on the question of who is involved in the production process—from research to development to…
Mapping Biotechnology: From Epistemic Artifacts to Geographies of Control
This article maps key epistemological and ontological terrains associated with biotechnology. Beginning with the epistemological, a comparison is made between the scientific representations of today, particularly as found in the genomic sciences, and the scientific representations of the past. In doing this, we find these representations have changed over the centuries, which has been of significant consequence in terms of giving shape to today's…
Saving Seeds, Saving Culture: A Case Study of a Heritage Seed Bank
This article examines a heritage seed saving organization, the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), a nonprofit seed bank in northeastern Iowa. To begin, I focus on how SSE conceives of seeds and nature more broadly. From here, the analysis moves to understand how these “ideas” of nature shape the materiality that is ultimately conserved. Next, the value statements of conservation are analyzed. All conservation policies and practices rest upon normative a…
Barriers to the Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture on Rented Land: An Examination of Contesting Social Fields
While over half of the cropland in the United States is rented, interest in land tenancy within sociological circles has been sporadic at best. In light of the prevalence of rented land in agriculture—particularly in the Midwest—it is vital that further research be conducted to investigate the effect that the rental relationship has upon the various aspects of rural life. This paper takes a step in this direction by examining the social dynamics …
More-than-Representational Knowledge/s of the Countryside: How We Think as Bodies
The empirical hypothesis that is explored in this article is: if we think with our bodies then we must think about the countryside with our bodies too. Working toward this end, the article begins by briefly reviewing the literature on embodied knowledge. From here, attention turns to the rough, empirical ground of everyday life. Before doing this, however, discussion centres briefly on methods, where the methodological implications of studying th…
Society, Biology, and Ecology: Bringing Nature Back Into Sociology’s Disciplinary Narrative Through Critical Realism
This article represents both a continuance and a reformulation of an ongoing project: a call to sociology proper to "bring nature back in." Moving beyond such earlier heuristics as Demeritt's "conjoined materiality," Freudenburg and colleagues'"conjoint constitution," Norgaard's "coevolution," and Bell's "ecological dialogue," this article uses Bhaskar's work and his writings on critical realism to develop a conceptual framework through which to …
The Wild Side of Agro-food Studies: On Co-experimentation, Politics, Change, and Hope
Noting that the field of agro-food studies has undergone numerous 'turns' over the years, this article first seeks to make sense of this evolving literature by examining aspects of the metaphysical foreground upon which this 'turning' takes place. Doing this highlights a coalescing of sorts within the field; a movement the author describes as being less toward a specific theoretical framework as it is around a general way of doing agro-food schol…
Do You See What I See? Examining the Epistemic Barriers to Sustainable Agriculture
This paper examines the epistemic barriers to sustainable agriculture, which are those aspects of food production that are not readily revealed by direct perception: such as decreases in rates of soil and nutrient loss, increases in levels of beneficial soil micro-organisms, and reductions in the amount of chemicals leaching into the water table. While many of sustainable agriculture's most touted benefits cannot easily or immediately be seen by …
Ontological Politics: Mapping a Complex Environmental Problem
What is an environmental problem? Philosophers of science and sociologists of knowledge have been writing for more than a decade about the de-centred, multiple object. Yet what if this insight were applied to the realm of environmental problems? What would be revealed? These questions are explored in this paper by examining the ontology of environmental problems. Ethnomethodologists, social constructionists, and sociologists of knowledge have all…
Introducing the concept of tactile space: Creating lasting social and environmental commitments
Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture
Science, Expertise, and the Democratization of the Decision-Making Process
Environmental scholars and practitioners are calling for the democratization of science and expertise. Two of the earliest and most influential arguments toward this end come to us from Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, with their now famous discussion of “postnormal science,” and Alvin Weinberg, with his well-known distinction between “research” and “trans-science”. Such positions, however, prove highly problematic. First, while calling for th…
The Mutability of Biotechnology Patents: From Unwieldy Products of Nature to Independent ‘Object/s’
This article details how patent law works to create discrete, immutable biological 'objects'. This socio-legal maneuver is necessary to distinguish these artifacts from the unwieldy (and thus unpatentable) realm of the natural world. The creation of 'objects' also serves the interests of capital, where a stable, unchanging, immutable object goes hand in hand with commodification. Yet this stabilization is incomplete. Pointing to a variety of diff…
Ecological Modernization Theory: What About Consumption
This article takes a critical look at ecological modernization, particularly in regard to its strong “productivist” orientation. The empirical and conceptual focus of ecological modernization is the problematization of production—namely, how things are produced. The question then becomes: Is the problematization of production, in itself, sufficient to render the question of (over)consumption irrelevant? I argue that it is not; a resolution to our…
I do therefore there is: Enlivening Socio-Environmental Theory
Socio-environmental theory needs to be enlivened, to be made with bodies – literally – in mind. Experiences of nature do not always fit neatly within categories of reason and rationality. Embodied knowledge plays a significant role in shaping how we think about nature. Following a brief overview of some literature on embodiment, to place 'flesh' on this argument, case studies, ethnographies and the like are examined to clarify the idea that we th…
Democratizing Knowledge: Sustainable and Conventional Agricultural Field Days as Divergent Democratic Forms
This article highlights that in our rush to call for the democratization of science and expertise we must not forget to speak to what type of democratization we are calling for. In short, not all participatory forms are the same. In developing this argument, I examine one such form that has yet to receive much attention from science and technology studies scholars: the agricultural field day. In examining the field day, we find that its orientati…
A Sociological Look at Biofuels: Ethanol in the Early Decades of the Twentieth Century and Lessons for Today
This article develops a broad sociological understanding of why biofuels lost out to leaded gasoline as the fuel par excellence of the twentieth century, while drawing comparisons with biofuels today. It begins by briefly discussing the fuel-scape in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining the farm chemurgic movement, New Deal agricultural policies, mechanization trends within agriculture, and, finally, t…
Ethanol versus Gasoline: The Contestation and Closure of a Socio-technical System in the USA
A variety of forces aligned at the turn of the last century to make ethyl alcohol--what is today known as ethanol--inefficient and uneconomical as a fuel alternative. Rather than a case of inevitable technological unfolding, the transition from King Coal to Big Oil was a sociologically contingent event. As a controversy study, this paper seeks to avoid the reductionist tendencies of past historical analyses of fuel. The author also seeks to redre…
The Bright- and Blind-Spots of Science: Why Objective Knowledge is not Enough to Resolve Environmental Controversies
This article investigates why science often does not speak with one voice within the context of environmental controversies. I argue that sociologists must be willing to turn to those processes and phenomena that are internal to science. In doing this, we find that many environmental conflicts are products, at least in part, of science itself. What is it about science that helps to breed these conflicts? In answering this question, this article f…
Illuminating Social Life: Classical and Contemporary Theory Revisited
This Is Not a Biodiversity Hotspot”: The Power of Maps and Other Images in the Environmental Sciences
Maps and images have power; they are neither neutral nor unproblematic with respect to issues of representation. Representation is not reality; to conflate the two is to risk naturalizing the assumptions silently embedded within these images. This article begins by reviewing the literature that explores the uneasy relationship between maps and the reality they are said to represent, with particular focus placed on those works examining maps withi…
Saving Seeds, Saving Culture: A Case Study of a Heritage Seed Bank
This article examines a heritage seed saving organization, the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), a nonprofit seed bank in northeastern Iowa. To begin, I focus on how SSE conceives of seeds and nature more broadly. From here, the analysis moves to understand how these “ideas” of nature shape the materiality that is ultimately conserved. Next, the value statements of conservation are analyzed. All conservation policies and practices rest upon normative a…
The Values and Vulnerabilities of Metaphors Within the Environmental Sciences
This article examines the use of language within the environmental sciences. The contents of a random sample of articles from three peer-reviewed environmental science journals are examined, each signifying a different field: Society & Natural Resources (sociology and policy), Conservation Biology (biology), and Ecology (ecology). Metaphorical terms were then recorded from the articles analyzed. All journals were found to employ metaphors equally…
Ecological representation in deliberation: The Contribution of Tactile Spaces
Deliberation must involve more than simply articulating and defending one's values and knowledge claims. Also important is the ability to experience those claims directly. Attention must thus be paid to creating spaces that are not only deliberative but also tactile, so individuals can experience for themselves the phenomena around which knowledge claims are being made. This becomes particularly important in environmental conflicts, given that th…
Ethanol’s most recent breakthrough in the United States: A case of socio-technical transition
Michael Carolan's Embodied Food Politics
The Problems with Patents: A Less than Optimistic Reading of the Future
This article examines a number of problems associated with patents. These are aspects of patents (and patent law) that are masked by conventional discourse that frequently equates strong patent protections with innovation and, ultimately, economic growth. This article will discuss: patents' links with knowledge and expertise; infrastructural requirements; innovation incentive structures; coercive tendencies (via high litigation and transactions c…
Is It a Distinct Subspecies? Preble's Mouse and the “Best Available Science” Mandate of the Endangered Species Act
This article examines the debate that surrounds the Preble's meadow jumping mouse listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While policymakers and politicians have been looking toward science to provide a resolution to this debate, this article argues that science alone cannot provide the answers we seek in this case. Two components of the ESA are first examined, which will allow us to conceptually make sense of the Preble's mouse controver…
The Environment and Society Reader
Illuminating Social Life: Classical and Contemporary Theory Revisited
Unmasking the commodity chain
Ecological Modernization Theory: What About Consumption
This article takes a critical look at ecological modernization, particularly in regard to its strong “productivist” orientation. The empirical and conceptual focus of ecological modernization is the problematization of production—namely, how things are produced. The question then becomes: Is the problematization of production, in itself, sufficient to render the question of (over)consumption irrelevant? I argue that it is not; a resolution to our…
Ecological Modernization and Consumption: A Reply to Mol and Spaargaren
All too often, “reply and respond” pieces do little to move disciplines (or subdisciplines) forward; instead, previous arguments are rearticulated, albeit in a somewhat different guise, leaving lit
Ontological Politics: Mapping a Complex Environmental Problem
What is an environmental problem? Philosophers of science and sociologists of knowledge have been writing for more than a decade about the de-centred, multiple object. Yet what if this insight were applied to the realm of environmental problems? What would be revealed? These questions are explored in this paper by examining the ontology of environmental problems. Ethnomethodologists, social constructionists, and sociologists of knowledge have all…
Society, Biology, and Ecology: Bringing Nature Back Into Sociology’s Disciplinary Narrative Through Critical Realism
This article represents both a continuance and a reformulation of an ongoing project: a call to sociology proper to "bring nature back in." Moving beyond such earlier heuristics as Demeritt's "conjoined materiality," Freudenburg and colleagues'"conjoint constitution," Norgaard's "coevolution," and Bell's "ecological dialogue," this article uses Bhaskar's work and his writings on critical realism to develop a conceptual framework through which to …
Barriers to the Adoption of Sustainable Agriculture on Rented Land: An Examination of Contesting Social Fields
While over half of the cropland in the United States is rented, interest in land tenancy within sociological circles has been sporadic at best. In light of the prevalence of rented land in agriculture—particularly in the Midwest—it is vital that further research be conducted to investigate the effect that the rental relationship has upon the various aspects of rural life. This paper takes a step in this direction by examining the social dynamics …
Conserving Nature, but to What end: Conservation Policies and the Unanticipated Ecologies They Support
The author examines various cases of conservation policies in practice, and the implication of those practices in terms of the ecologies they support, showing, in the end, that the “nature” being preserved is not always the one intended. In doing this, insights are also gleaned to inform how we should do environmental sociology, and what lies in environmental sociology's future if we work toward this end. The author argues that environmental soci…
Science, Expertise, and the Democratization of the Decision-Making Process
Environmental scholars and practitioners are calling for the democratization of science and expertise. Two of the earliest and most influential arguments toward this end come to us from Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, with their now famous discussion of “postnormal science,” and Alvin Weinberg, with his well-known distinction between “research” and “trans-science”. Such positions, however, prove highly problematic. First, while calling for th…
The Values and Vulnerabilities of Metaphors Within the Environmental Sciences
This article examines the use of language within the environmental sciences. The contents of a random sample of articles from three peer-reviewed environmental science journals are examined, each signifying a different field: Society & Natural Resources (sociology and policy), Conservation Biology (biology), and Ecology (ecology). Metaphorical terms were then recorded from the articles analyzed. All journals were found to employ metaphors equally…
Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture
Ecological representation in deliberation: The Contribution of Tactile Spaces
Deliberation must involve more than simply articulating and defending one's values and knowledge claims. Also important is the ability to experience those claims directly. Attention must thus be paid to creating spaces that are not only deliberative but also tactile, so individuals can experience for themselves the phenomena around which knowledge claims are being made. This becomes particularly important in environmental conflicts, given that th…
Do You See What I See? Examining the Epistemic Barriers to Sustainable Agriculture
This paper examines the epistemic barriers to sustainable agriculture, which are those aspects of food production that are not readily revealed by direct perception: such as decreases in rates of soil and nutrient loss, increases in levels of beneficial soil micro-organisms, and reductions in the amount of chemicals leaching into the water table. While many of sustainable agriculture's most touted benefits cannot easily or immediately be seen by …
The Precautionary Principle and Traditional Risk Assessment: Rethinking How We Assess and Mitigate Environmental Threats
The article begins by problematizing the risk assessment and precautionary principle frameworks. From here, attention turns toward the development of an alternative, more holistic, scheme for assessing and mitigating environmental threats. Recognizing that the assessment and mitigation of environmental threats is a multilayered process, discussion centers on the question of who is involved in the production process—from research to development to…
Mapping Biotechnology: From Epistemic Artifacts to Geographies of Control
This article maps key epistemological and ontological terrains associated with biotechnology. Beginning with the epistemological, a comparison is made between the scientific representations of today, particularly as found in the genomic sciences, and the scientific representations of the past. In doing this, we find these representations have changed over the centuries, which has been of significant consequence in terms of giving shape to today's…
Saving Seeds, Saving Culture: A Case Study of a Heritage Seed Bank
This article examines a heritage seed saving organization, the Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), a nonprofit seed bank in northeastern Iowa. To begin, I focus on how SSE conceives of seeds and nature more broadly. From here, the analysis moves to understand how these “ideas” of nature shape the materiality that is ultimately conserved. Next, the value statements of conservation are analyzed. All conservation policies and practices rest upon normative a…
Introducing the concept of tactile space: Creating lasting social and environmental commitments
One step forward, two steps back: Flood management policy in the United States
After reviewing two core flood hazard mitigation policies within the United States – the 100-year standard and the National Flood Insurance Program – this discussion focuses upon policy recommendations for improving flood hazard mitigation in the US. In the end, it is found that flood hazard mitigation policy within the US, while full of good intentions, has unintentionally produced many hurdles. These hurdles are detailed and recommendations des…
Making Patents and Intellectual Property Work: The Asymmetrical “Harmonization” of TRIPS
Patents are a performance , in both their creation and subsequent enactions. They require skill, tacit/embodied knowledge, and practice if they are to be successfully enacted. Western intellectual property law, however, is blind to the performative aspect of patents. This sociolegal reality has helped to create significant asymmetries between nations, particularly after the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS…
Constructing the “pure” inventor: Individual, collective, and corporate authorship within patent law
This paper details how patent law purifies “the” inventing subject of big science while simultaneously disqualifying others from patent eligibility for practicing a similar form of collective authorship. The author begins by detailing what is known as the romantic author trope – the assumption within (Western) patent law that invention is the product of one (versus many). The romantic author trope, however, runs counter to the (collective) invent…
Is It a Distinct Subspecies? Preble's Mouse and the “Best Available Science” Mandate of the Endangered Species Act
This article examines the debate that surrounds the Preble's meadow jumping mouse listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While policymakers and politicians have been looking toward science to provide a resolution to this debate, this article argues that science alone cannot provide the answers we seek in this case. Two components of the ESA are first examined, which will allow us to conceptually make sense of the Preble's mouse controver…
Precautionary Politics: Principle and Practice in Confronting Environmental Risk
Democratizing Knowledge: Sustainable and Conventional Agricultural Field Days as Divergent Democratic Forms
This article highlights that in our rush to call for the democratization of science and expertise we must not forget to speak to what type of democratization we are calling for. In short, not all participatory forms are the same. In developing this argument, I examine one such form that has yet to receive much attention from science and technology studies scholars: the agricultural field day. In examining the field day, we find that its orientati…
From patent law to regulation: The Ontological Gerrymandering of Biotechnology
Biotechnology is (ontologically speaking) many things. US patent law's understanding of 'the natural' has shrunk over the decades to allow the patenting of artefacts – such as organisms, cell lines, chemical compounds, and cDNA – that would previously have been unpatentable. However, when attempting to garner public support or minimise regulatory hurdles, proponents of biotechnology emphasise how these artefacts are no different from their un-eng…
Sociology (31 works) · Political science (29 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Law (22 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Philosophy (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Social science (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works)