Biotechnology, Controversy, and Policy: Challenges of the Bioeconomy in Latin America

in Technology in Society (2013)

This special issue explores cases from Latin American countries, studied in comparison to global trends in the arenas of public participation, scientific knowledge production, regulation and governance ... [more ▼]

This special issue explores cases from Latin American countries, studied in comparison to global trends in the arenas of public participation, scientific knowledge production, regulation and governance. The authors demonstrate the complexity of these cases, both in terms of regional differences and the different spaces of public, policy, and scientific knowledge production into which such innovations are inserted. The articles are based on rich empirical data collected in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. Authors show that the top-down circulation of policy narratives on biotechnology is challenged, complemented and even partly undermined by local bottom-up dynamics. Conversely, articles also focus on those grassroots dynamics and the ways they are influenced and conditioned by macro-sociological and political economic factors. Lastly, a great deal of attention is paid to the ways states and national actors actively contribute to their own insertion in globalized markets where bioengineered living resources are increasingly tasked with solving the most pressing economic and social issues. We believe that this collection of works challenges scholars, intellectuals, policy-makers and relevant stakeholders to open up their views of biotechnology as a dynamic construct that interacts with local situations in a variety of ways. From a more distanced perspective, the aggregated findings of the contributors to this special issue suggest that the important tasks for scholarly work on bioeconomy today become (1) to observe and critically assess the de-localization and re-localization of the concept of bioeconomy in Latin America where biological resources have become increasingly strategic over the last decades; (2) to analyze the bioeconomy as a site of struggles among countries and/or social groups who articulate strategic visions as part of narrating activities. [less ▲]

The multifaceted struggle for power in the bioeconomy

in Technology in Society (2013), 35(2),

Réguler par la science: le cas des aliments fonctionnels

Conference (2013, March 08)

Het Licht van Vlaanderen

Article for general public (2012)

A metaphorical reflection on police control in Flanders, and the creation of a suspicious Other

Qu'est-ce q'un alicament? Débat scientifique et étranges familiarités

Scientific conference (2012, October 16)

Les aliments fonctionnels à la quête d'une science

Conference (2012, June 01)

Comment peut-on montrer qu'un aliment, ou un de ses composants, confère un effet bénéfique à la santé humaine, outre sa valeur nutritionnelle? L'histoire de cette question et les débats qui l'entourent au ... [more ▼]

Comment peut-on montrer qu'un aliment, ou un de ses composants, confère un effet bénéfique à la santé humaine, outre sa valeur nutritionnelle? L'histoire de cette question et les débats qui l'entourent au sein de l'Union Européenne à l'heure actuelle seront discutés lors de cette présentation. Notre analyse se concentrera sur un débat qui a eu lieu en mars dernier à l'Académie Royale des Sciences à Amsterdam. À l'aide d'une analyse des discours, nous évoquerons les grandes lignes d'argumentation des acteurs qui se trouvent confrontés dans ce débat: le European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) et les acteurs de l'industrie alimentaire. À son tour, cette analyse nous aidera à mieux comprendre les controverses et les enjeux autour de la régulation européenne sur les allégations de santé (CE n°1924/2006) dans un contexte politique plus général. Notre approche est anthropologique dans la mesure où nous cherchons à comprendre les argumentations sur la nature de la preuve scientifique du point de vue des acteurs mêmes. Le but de notre présentation n'est donc pas d'arriver à un jugement quelconque concernant la valeur scientifique des argumentations respectives. Le plan analytique de notre approche se trouve ailleurs: il s'agira d'expliciter non la valeur scientifique des positions prises, mais la forme politique et les enjeux professionnels de ces positions différentes. Se trouvent confrontés dans le débat autour des allégations de santé: la 'raison' de la science médicale/pharmaceutique et la 'raison' des sciences de la nutrition. En effet, les acteurs ne cessent d'évoquer cette dualité qui se traduit en deux programmes politico-scientifiques: evidence-based medicine (EBM) versus evidence-based nutrition (EBN). Bien que la EBN se veut distincte de la EBM, elle se définit néanmoins par rapport à cette dernière, ce qui mène à des ambiguïtés autour du sens et du rôle des essais cliniques randomisés, des indicateurs biologiques (biomarkers), des types de sujets à recruter pour les essais cliniques, et, finalement, de la définition de la 'santé' même. C'est ici, dans le lien entre un programme scientifique et la définition de la santé, que la science soulève la question non de sa propre vérité, mais bien qui, quelle profession, aura le droit de parler vrai. Ici, encore, nous voyons comment surgit dans un contexte tout à fait contemporain un thème central et fondemental dans les traditions de l'anthropologie et de la sociologie médicale: les quêtes de pouvoir et de légitimité entre science, politique et corps professionnels. Notre étude fait partie d'une recherche doctorale visant à explorer les relations historiques et contemporaines entre les sciences de la nutrition, la politique et la société en Europe. Nous suivons une méthodologie qualitative pour analyser des entretiens, nos participations à des colloques scientifiques, des textes juridiques et scientifiques, des newsletters dans le domaine de la nutrition, et de la littérature secondaire, principalement en anthropologie et en histoire. [less ▲]

Reflections on the notion of 'consumer behaviour'

Conference (2012, April 20)

Today, consumer behavior has become a key concept in scientific publications and in international public health strategies. Both 'behavior' and the 'consumer' are in the title of the 3rd annual conference ... [more ▼]

Today, consumer behavior has become a key concept in scientific publications and in international public health strategies. Both 'behavior' and the 'consumer' are in the title of the 3rd annual conference of the Belgian Nutrition Society. This paper proposes a reflection on these concepts, and invites for further discussion. Firstly, the 'consumer' and his attributes will be briefly explored through an analysis of the Health Claims Regulation EC No 1924/2006. This document, intended to protect consumers from misleading information, uses a model of the consumer rooted in rational choice theory. Secondly, as medical sociologist David Armstrong (2009) has shown, the term 'behavior' has been brought in relation to health outcomes only relatively recently in medicine and public health. As such, it has come to be defined as a modifiable risk factor. I argue that European public health strategies have integrated this definition of behavior and the related idea of 'lifestyle' into rational choice theory. As such, 'behavior' and 'lifestyle' frame problems of health and disease in a specific way. The third section of this paper will confront this model of problem-framing with different understandings of 'behavior' coming from historical and contemporary sociological research. [less ▲]

Putting Prebiotics in their Place. On Europe's Intestinal Flora

Scientific conference (2012, January 18)

Problématiser la santé: les alicaments et la nouvelle science nutritionnelle

Scientific conference (2011, May 10)

Functional Foods: Spaces of Innovation and the Materiality of Scientific Universality

Conference (2011, March 29)

Throughout human history, different authorities have prescribed what to eat and what foodstuffs to avoid. This paper looks at one particular authority that has gained considerable influence in the past ... [more ▼]

Throughout human history, different authorities have prescribed what to eat and what foodstuffs to avoid. This paper looks at one particular authority that has gained considerable influence in the past two decades: nutrition science. Our aim is to render a subfield of nutrition science called ‘functional food science’ ethnographically analyzable, in order to add more precision to the common statement that the ‘findings’ of ‘scientists’ have become recognized by ‘the European Authorities’. Which actors are involved, what are the actors’ respective playing fields, and how are these fields related? The paper is divided in a descriptive part, and a discussion section. In the descriptive part, we propose a brief genealogy of functional food science and the construction of a new scientific gaze on food. The genealogy enables us to distinguish a series of actors, choices, and locally rooted practices in a story that is qualitatively different from accounts in terms of scientific universality. The discussion section at the end of this paper proposes further venues for anthropological research into the relations between science, health and power in a competitive economic and political order. These research questions problematize the meaning and substance of ‘innovation’. [less ▲]