David Tyfield | Lancaster University (original) (raw)

Papers by David Tyfield

This is part 3 of my extended review of Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'. This part discusses Maso... more This is part 3 of my extended review of Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'. This part discusses Mason's argument that the Kondratiev wave cycle is broken.

The second part of the extended review of Paul Mason's 'Postcapitalism'.

This is the overview and introduction to an extended series of short pieces reviewing Paul Mason'... more This is the overview and introduction to an extended series of short pieces reviewing Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'

by Christopher Groves, Phil Macnaghten, Renzo Taddei, Adalberto Azevedo, Brian Garvey, André Sica Campos, Sara Helen Wilford, Lea Maria L S Velho, Markku Lehtonen, David Tyfield, Marko Monteiro, Leonardo Freire de Mello, and Bruno Rondani

Journal of Responsible Innovation

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from th... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible
innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and environmentally beneficial solution... more Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and environmentally beneficial solution to oil dependence. The promotion of sugar-derived ethanol as a substitute for petroleum has thus been key to state development and international trade policies by Brazil and the European Union, respectively, and subsequent investment by leading energy and food transnational corporations has transformed socio-spatial relations in the new sites of production. Brazilian rural worker testimonies, however, point to large-scale labour exclusion rather than reform and a deepening, rather than disruption, of historic power inequalities in the sector. Labour contestation challenges
a converging institutional discourse of responsible technological innovation and social upgrading associated with emerging commodity chains and the ‘green’ economy. Although corporate and statutory response has been market-orientated certification and ‘more technology’ the idea of the ‘technoinstitutional fix’ provides a power relation-attentive analysis that invites the further exploration of socially committed alternatives to food and energy production.

This paper explores environmental innovation in the largest emerging economy – China - and its po... more This paper explores environmental innovation in the largest emerging economy – China - and its potential for contributing to global transitions to low-carbon, more sustainable patterns of development. It builds on earlier studies bringing alternative forms of low(er)-technology, ‘below-the-radar’, ‘disruptive’ and/or social innovation into its analysis. In addition, however, the paper develops our understanding of low-carbon innovation by paying particular attention to issues of changing power relations and social practices; theoretical issues that need attention in the literature generally but are notably absent when studying transitions in China. This shift in perspective allows four neglected questions to be introduced and, in each case, points to both opportunities and challenges to low-carbon system transition that are overlooked by an orthodox focus on technological innovations alone. These are briefly illustrated by drawing on examples from three key domains of low-carbon innovation: solar-generated energy; electric urban mobility; and food and agriculture.

China’s potential transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient or ‘post-carbon’ society is a key... more China’s potential transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient or ‘post-carbon’ society is a key concern for the world. There is an urgent need for better understanding of this process, posing major challenges for social science given the complex, systemic and emergent nature of the multiple processes involved
in such a possible transition. This Working Paper is the first of a series of four 'China Low Carbon Reports' outlining the STEPS-Centre affiliate project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice', led from Lancaster University. The project is designed around problem-led social scientific research involving partners from leading UK and Chinese institutions. It aims to assess the status of, and opportunities for, low-carbon transitions in China by going beyond existing technology-focused approaches to innovation. In particular, this involves a re-insertion and reconceptualisation of
power within the processes of low-carbon transitions, conceived as processes of socio-technical systems, and with greater attention paid to everyday social practices of both ‘users’ and producers.
Through this distinct approach, the project offers empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of (low-carbon) socio-technical transitions both in China and more broadly.
The paper outlines the background to this project, the urgency of deeper and more productive understanding of the prospects of low-carbon transition in China, and the theoretical and methodological approaches adopted to do this.

China represents a test-case of global significance regarding the challenges of urban mobility tr... more China represents a test-case of global significance regarding the challenges of urban mobility transition to more sustainable models. On the one hand, transportation accounts for approximately one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). China is globally central to 'greening' mobility as already
the world's largest car market but with significant further growth predicted. On the other hand, the growth of (fossil-fuelled) urban mobility is a key feature of the immense changes that have occurred since 1978 in China. Yet in both respects, the need for a change in the model of urban mobility is increasingly urgent, as manifest in issues of emissions and air pollution, urban gridlock and its social costs, and intensifying unrest around urban mobility issues. China, however, is also the site of significant government and corporate innovation efforts focused on opportunities for 'catch-up' in a key industry of the twenty first century around the electric vehicle (EV). At the same time, the much
lower-technology electric two-wheeler (E2W) has emerged as a global market entirely dominated by small Chinese firms and their Chinese customers.
This is one of a series of four China low carbon reports outlining the STEPS Centre affiliate project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice', led from Lancaster University. Taking a perspective that explores specific domains of low carbon innovation in China through the lens of changing power relations and associated social practices, this Working Paper provides an introduction to the e-mobility research package of the project, reviewing the relevant literature around urban electric mobility transitions in China and describing the project's research approach and potential contribution to knowledge in this area. It argues that, despite the disappointment to date regarding EVs, the evidence shows a highly dynamic and geographically diverse situation in China, but one in which a successful urban mobility transition as currently envisaged remains improbable.

A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The mu... more A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is justifiably a leading approach in such research, with important connections to high-profile socio-technical systemic analyses within the mobilities paradigm. The paper explores the key contributions that a Foucauldian-inspired cultural political economy (CPE) offers, going beyond central problems with the MLP, specifically regarding: a productive concept of power that affords analysis of the qualitatively novel and dynamic process of transition; and the incorporation of the exogenous ‘landscape’ into the analysis. This move thus resonates with growing calls for attention to power dynamics in mobilities research and a ‘structural’ turn. In making this case, we deploy the key case study of contemporary efforts towards mobility transition in China. This not only sets out more starkly the importance of MLP’s gaps but also provides an empirical case to illustrate, albeit in the form of informed speculation, possible routes to low-carbon urban mobility transition and the inseparability from broader qualitative power transitions at multiple scales, including the global.

Much discourse on low-carbon transition envisages progressive social change towards environmental... more Much discourse on low-carbon transition envisages progressive social change towards environmentally sustainable and more equitable societies. Yet much of this literature pays inadequate attention to the key question of (productive, relational) power. How do energy infrastructures and socio-technical systems interact with, construct, enable and constrain political regimes, and vice versa? Conceiving low-carbon energy transitions through a power lens, the paper explores a case study of huge, but overlooked, significance: the paradox of the ‘phenomenal’ resurgence of coal in an era of low-carbon innovation. Through exposition of the strong connections between coal-based socio-technical systems and a political regime of classical liberalism, illustrated in two eras, we trace an emerging constellation of energy and political regimes connecting ‘clean coal’ with a ‘liberalism 2.0’ centred on a rising China. This affords a critique of the low-carbon society emergent from these developments – a society more reminiscent of coal's previous Dickensian heyday than the progressive visions of much ‘low-carbon transition’ literature.

The ascendancy of sciences capable of grappling with complexity is undoubtedly to be welcomed, no... more The ascendancy of sciences capable of grappling with complexity is undoubtedly to be welcomed, not least in this moment of profound and overlapping systemic problems. Yet the emergence of sciences with a more sophisticated epistemology alone offers no reassurance that such knowledge will then primarily, or better, serve emancipatory and/or critical purposes. Rather, such knowledge must be treated as neither good nor bad per se, but dangerous. From this perspective, the paper explores the knowledge politics of the present conjuncture, the context for this rise of the complexity sciences. It discerns a new politics of security and “preparedness” that could well serve to construct a new dominant paradigm of complexity sciences that, to the contrary, serves primarily to construct a new “scientific” legitimacy for the egregious inequalities of the age of neoliberalism-in-crisis.

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Mitigating human-induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practi... more Mitigating human-induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practice. These global challenges also demand a double transformation of the social sciences – first, from ‘methodological nationalism’ to ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ and, second, an empirical reorientation towards ‘cosmopolitization’ as the social force of emerging cosmopolitan realities. One of these realities is the possible emergence, locally and globally, of ‘cosmopolitan communities of climate risk’ in response to a ‘world at risk’. A key research question for contemporary social science is thus: how and where are new cosmopolitan communities of climate risk being imagined and realized? In this article, we propose and explore a research agenda formulated around this key question. We both develop a theoretical perspective and provide short empirical illustrations of case studies regarding ongoing research in Europe and East Asia on such cosmopolitan climate risk communities.

The present is a moment of crisis and transition, both generally and specifically in “knowledge” ... more The present is a moment of crisis and transition, both generally and specifically in “knowledge” and its institutions. Acknowledging this elicits the key questions: where are we? Where are we headed? What, if anything, can be done about this? And what can the “economics of science” contribute to this? This paper assumes a “cultural political economy of research & innovation” (CPERI) perspective to explore the current upheaval and transition in the system of academic knowledge
production, at the confluence of accelerating commercialisation and the seemingly opposing movement of “open science.” This perspective affords a characterisation of the core of the current crises as a crisis of moral economy; an issue to which a political economy of epistemic authority is in turn crucial. A “remoralizing” of knowledge production is thus a matter of key systemic importance, though it is important to understand such developments in power-strategic, and not explicitly
moral, terms. Much of the current moves towards “open science” and “massively open online courses” (MOOCs) can also then be seen as self-defeating developments that simply exacerbate the crisis of a viable “economy of science” and in no sense its solution. Their lasting significance, however, is more likely to lie precisely in their effects on the construction of a new moral economy of knowledge production.

How are we to understand the multiple overlapping crises of the present? In a superbly enlighteni... more How are we to understand the multiple overlapping crises of the present? In a superbly enlightening synthesis of Marxian (critique of) political economy and systems theory, Robert Biel presents a compelling case for the importance of an entropic perspective, regarding both thermodynamic and informational flows that constitute and transform social systems. This perspective offers an insightful analysis of neoliberalism as an attempt to harness the entropic benefits of spontaneous and complex emergence for the purposes of capitalist accumulation. The current crises may thus be understood as the overflowing of the resulting
complexity and the pathological response of neoliberal powers, further
accelerating this process. But is capitalism itself thus exhausted? An alternative
scenario of rejuvenated capitalism is outlined, together with the implications of Biel’s analysis for critical realism, critical social theory and a politics of the Left.

Science, Technology and Human Values 38(3): 299-327, 2013

In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and ... more In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC), modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging ‘‘bioeconomy’’ in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for increasing our wealth and our health. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous ‘‘bio-concepts.’’ Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their capitalization. The article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially in the fetishization of everything ‘‘bio.’’ We offer an alternative view of the bioeconomy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes.

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing sei... more Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power.

This is part 3 of my extended review of Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'. This part discusses Maso... more This is part 3 of my extended review of Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'. This part discusses Mason's argument that the Kondratiev wave cycle is broken.

The second part of the extended review of Paul Mason's 'Postcapitalism'.

This is the overview and introduction to an extended series of short pieces reviewing Paul Mason'... more This is the overview and introduction to an extended series of short pieces reviewing Paul Mason's 'Post-Capitalism'

by Christopher Groves, Phil Macnaghten, Renzo Taddei, Adalberto Azevedo, Brian Garvey, André Sica Campos, Sara Helen Wilford, Lea Maria L S Velho, Markku Lehtonen, David Tyfield, Marko Monteiro, Leonardo Freire de Mello, and Bruno Rondani

Journal of Responsible Innovation

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from th... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible
innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and environmentally beneficial solution... more Agrofuels are increasingly sourced and sold as a socially and environmentally beneficial solution to oil dependence. The promotion of sugar-derived ethanol as a substitute for petroleum has thus been key to state development and international trade policies by Brazil and the European Union, respectively, and subsequent investment by leading energy and food transnational corporations has transformed socio-spatial relations in the new sites of production. Brazilian rural worker testimonies, however, point to large-scale labour exclusion rather than reform and a deepening, rather than disruption, of historic power inequalities in the sector. Labour contestation challenges
a converging institutional discourse of responsible technological innovation and social upgrading associated with emerging commodity chains and the ‘green’ economy. Although corporate and statutory response has been market-orientated certification and ‘more technology’ the idea of the ‘technoinstitutional fix’ provides a power relation-attentive analysis that invites the further exploration of socially committed alternatives to food and energy production.

This paper explores environmental innovation in the largest emerging economy – China - and its po... more This paper explores environmental innovation in the largest emerging economy – China - and its potential for contributing to global transitions to low-carbon, more sustainable patterns of development. It builds on earlier studies bringing alternative forms of low(er)-technology, ‘below-the-radar’, ‘disruptive’ and/or social innovation into its analysis. In addition, however, the paper develops our understanding of low-carbon innovation by paying particular attention to issues of changing power relations and social practices; theoretical issues that need attention in the literature generally but are notably absent when studying transitions in China. This shift in perspective allows four neglected questions to be introduced and, in each case, points to both opportunities and challenges to low-carbon system transition that are overlooked by an orthodox focus on technological innovations alone. These are briefly illustrated by drawing on examples from three key domains of low-carbon innovation: solar-generated energy; electric urban mobility; and food and agriculture.

China’s potential transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient or ‘post-carbon’ society is a key... more China’s potential transition to a low-carbon, climate resilient or ‘post-carbon’ society is a key concern for the world. There is an urgent need for better understanding of this process, posing major challenges for social science given the complex, systemic and emergent nature of the multiple processes involved
in such a possible transition. This Working Paper is the first of a series of four 'China Low Carbon Reports' outlining the STEPS-Centre affiliate project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice', led from Lancaster University. The project is designed around problem-led social scientific research involving partners from leading UK and Chinese institutions. It aims to assess the status of, and opportunities for, low-carbon transitions in China by going beyond existing technology-focused approaches to innovation. In particular, this involves a re-insertion and reconceptualisation of
power within the processes of low-carbon transitions, conceived as processes of socio-technical systems, and with greater attention paid to everyday social practices of both ‘users’ and producers.
Through this distinct approach, the project offers empirical, methodological and theoretical contributions to the study of (low-carbon) socio-technical transitions both in China and more broadly.
The paper outlines the background to this project, the urgency of deeper and more productive understanding of the prospects of low-carbon transition in China, and the theoretical and methodological approaches adopted to do this.

China represents a test-case of global significance regarding the challenges of urban mobility tr... more China represents a test-case of global significance regarding the challenges of urban mobility transition to more sustainable models. On the one hand, transportation accounts for approximately one quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). China is globally central to 'greening' mobility as already
the world's largest car market but with significant further growth predicted. On the other hand, the growth of (fossil-fuelled) urban mobility is a key feature of the immense changes that have occurred since 1978 in China. Yet in both respects, the need for a change in the model of urban mobility is increasingly urgent, as manifest in issues of emissions and air pollution, urban gridlock and its social costs, and intensifying unrest around urban mobility issues. China, however, is also the site of significant government and corporate innovation efforts focused on opportunities for 'catch-up' in a key industry of the twenty first century around the electric vehicle (EV). At the same time, the much
lower-technology electric two-wheeler (E2W) has emerged as a global market entirely dominated by small Chinese firms and their Chinese customers.
This is one of a series of four China low carbon reports outlining the STEPS Centre affiliate project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China: Prospects, Politics and Practice', led from Lancaster University. Taking a perspective that explores specific domains of low carbon innovation in China through the lens of changing power relations and associated social practices, this Working Paper provides an introduction to the e-mobility research package of the project, reviewing the relevant literature around urban electric mobility transitions in China and describing the project's research approach and potential contribution to knowledge in this area. It argues that, despite the disappointment to date regarding EVs, the evidence shows a highly dynamic and geographically diverse situation in China, but one in which a successful urban mobility transition as currently envisaged remains improbable.

A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The mu... more A mobility low-carbon transition is a key issue both socially and for mobilities research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) is justifiably a leading approach in such research, with important connections to high-profile socio-technical systemic analyses within the mobilities paradigm. The paper explores the key contributions that a Foucauldian-inspired cultural political economy (CPE) offers, going beyond central problems with the MLP, specifically regarding: a productive concept of power that affords analysis of the qualitatively novel and dynamic process of transition; and the incorporation of the exogenous ‘landscape’ into the analysis. This move thus resonates with growing calls for attention to power dynamics in mobilities research and a ‘structural’ turn. In making this case, we deploy the key case study of contemporary efforts towards mobility transition in China. This not only sets out more starkly the importance of MLP’s gaps but also provides an empirical case to illustrate, albeit in the form of informed speculation, possible routes to low-carbon urban mobility transition and the inseparability from broader qualitative power transitions at multiple scales, including the global.

Much discourse on low-carbon transition envisages progressive social change towards environmental... more Much discourse on low-carbon transition envisages progressive social change towards environmentally sustainable and more equitable societies. Yet much of this literature pays inadequate attention to the key question of (productive, relational) power. How do energy infrastructures and socio-technical systems interact with, construct, enable and constrain political regimes, and vice versa? Conceiving low-carbon energy transitions through a power lens, the paper explores a case study of huge, but overlooked, significance: the paradox of the ‘phenomenal’ resurgence of coal in an era of low-carbon innovation. Through exposition of the strong connections between coal-based socio-technical systems and a political regime of classical liberalism, illustrated in two eras, we trace an emerging constellation of energy and political regimes connecting ‘clean coal’ with a ‘liberalism 2.0’ centred on a rising China. This affords a critique of the low-carbon society emergent from these developments – a society more reminiscent of coal's previous Dickensian heyday than the progressive visions of much ‘low-carbon transition’ literature.

The ascendancy of sciences capable of grappling with complexity is undoubtedly to be welcomed, no... more The ascendancy of sciences capable of grappling with complexity is undoubtedly to be welcomed, not least in this moment of profound and overlapping systemic problems. Yet the emergence of sciences with a more sophisticated epistemology alone offers no reassurance that such knowledge will then primarily, or better, serve emancipatory and/or critical purposes. Rather, such knowledge must be treated as neither good nor bad per se, but dangerous. From this perspective, the paper explores the knowledge politics of the present conjuncture, the context for this rise of the complexity sciences. It discerns a new politics of security and “preparedness” that could well serve to construct a new dominant paradigm of complexity sciences that, to the contrary, serves primarily to construct a new “scientific” legitimacy for the egregious inequalities of the age of neoliberalism-in-crisis.

In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the... more In March 2014 a group of early career researchers and academics from São Paulo state and from the UK met at the University of Campinas to participate in a workshop on ‘Responsible Innovation and the Governance of Socially Controversial Technologies’. In this Perspective we describe key reflections and observations from the workshop discussions, paying particular attention to the discourse of responsible innovation from a cross-cultural perspective. We describe a number of important tensions, paradoxes and opportunities that emerged over the three days of the workshop.

Mitigating human-induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practi... more Mitigating human-induced climate change calls for a globalized change of consciousness and practice. These global challenges also demand a double transformation of the social sciences – first, from ‘methodological nationalism’ to ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ and, second, an empirical reorientation towards ‘cosmopolitization’ as the social force of emerging cosmopolitan realities. One of these realities is the possible emergence, locally and globally, of ‘cosmopolitan communities of climate risk’ in response to a ‘world at risk’. A key research question for contemporary social science is thus: how and where are new cosmopolitan communities of climate risk being imagined and realized? In this article, we propose and explore a research agenda formulated around this key question. We both develop a theoretical perspective and provide short empirical illustrations of case studies regarding ongoing research in Europe and East Asia on such cosmopolitan climate risk communities.

The present is a moment of crisis and transition, both generally and specifically in “knowledge” ... more The present is a moment of crisis and transition, both generally and specifically in “knowledge” and its institutions. Acknowledging this elicits the key questions: where are we? Where are we headed? What, if anything, can be done about this? And what can the “economics of science” contribute to this? This paper assumes a “cultural political economy of research & innovation” (CPERI) perspective to explore the current upheaval and transition in the system of academic knowledge
production, at the confluence of accelerating commercialisation and the seemingly opposing movement of “open science.” This perspective affords a characterisation of the core of the current crises as a crisis of moral economy; an issue to which a political economy of epistemic authority is in turn crucial. A “remoralizing” of knowledge production is thus a matter of key systemic importance, though it is important to understand such developments in power-strategic, and not explicitly
moral, terms. Much of the current moves towards “open science” and “massively open online courses” (MOOCs) can also then be seen as self-defeating developments that simply exacerbate the crisis of a viable “economy of science” and in no sense its solution. Their lasting significance, however, is more likely to lie precisely in their effects on the construction of a new moral economy of knowledge production.

How are we to understand the multiple overlapping crises of the present? In a superbly enlighteni... more How are we to understand the multiple overlapping crises of the present? In a superbly enlightening synthesis of Marxian (critique of) political economy and systems theory, Robert Biel presents a compelling case for the importance of an entropic perspective, regarding both thermodynamic and informational flows that constitute and transform social systems. This perspective offers an insightful analysis of neoliberalism as an attempt to harness the entropic benefits of spontaneous and complex emergence for the purposes of capitalist accumulation. The current crises may thus be understood as the overflowing of the resulting
complexity and the pathological response of neoliberal powers, further
accelerating this process. But is capitalism itself thus exhausted? An alternative
scenario of rejuvenated capitalism is outlined, together with the implications of Biel’s analysis for critical realism, critical social theory and a politics of the Left.

Science, Technology and Human Values 38(3): 299-327, 2013

In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and ... more In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC), modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging ‘‘bioeconomy’’ in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for increasing our wealth and our health. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous ‘‘bio-concepts.’’ Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their capitalization. The article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially in the fetishization of everything ‘‘bio.’’ We offer an alternative view of the bioeconomy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes.

Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing sei... more Science and technology policy is both faced by unprecedented challenges and itself undergoing seismic shifts. First, policy is increasingly demanding of science that it fixes a set of epochal and global crises. On the other hand, practices of scientific research are changing rapidly regarding geographical dispersion, the institutions and identities of those involved and its forms of knowledge production and circulation. Furthermore, these changes are accelerated by the current upheavals in public funding of research, higher education and technology development in the wake of the economic crisis. The paper outlines an agenda for science & technology policy studies in terms of a research programme of a ‘cultural political economy of research and innovation’ (CPERI). First, the implications of the overlapping crises for science policy analysis are discussed. Secondly, three rough constellations of contemporary approaches to science policy are critically compared, namely: a techno-statist Keynesian governance; a neoliberal marketplace of ideas; and co-productionist enabling of democratic debate. CPERI is then introduced, showing how it builds on the strengths of co-production while also specifically targeting two major weaknesses that are of heightened importance in an age of multiple crises, namely neglect of political economy and the concept of power.