[SustainableTompkins] April 25-26 Workshop on Biotech Contentions

[Eric Banford]

http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0609/Biotech.html

This workshop, free and open to the public, is sponsored by the ISS Contentious Knowledge Research Team. If you will be joining us for lunch, please RSVP to socialsciences at cornell.edu. The panels are free and no RSVP is necessary.

 
              Amongthe most contentious strands of knowledge in the contemporary world isthat surrounding transgenic organisms: "GMOs" in popular parlance.These products of genetic engineering have been presented in globalpolitics as promising a significant improvement in the human conditionor threatening its extinction. This workshop will look specifically atcontestation of authoritative claims in the global debate: bioproperty,biosafety, biopolitics. How have social movements deployedauthoritative knowledge to back their positions and legitimate theirstanding? How is science interjected into the contention; whatdifference does science make?  What has been the basis of operativeauthority? How has framing of genetic engineering and its productsaffected regulatory science and national politics in different worldregions? How does the GMO debate fit into other strands of theinternational movement confronting globalization? The point of theworkshop is to
 understand the strands of contention empirically, not toitself generate contention.

Tentative schedule: http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0609/BiotechSchedule040708.pdf





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