Message posted on 18/01/2019

CfP: 4S 2019 Open Panel 119 - Regeneration, Promises and Innovation in the Bioeconomy

Dear colleagues,

We would like to invite abstract proposals to our Open Panel on Regeneration, Promises and Innovation in the Bioeconomy at the next 4S Conference in New Orleans (4-7 September 2019).
Deadline for submission: 1st February 2019; https://www.4s2019.org/call-for-submissions/

Open Panel 119 - Regenerations, Promises and Innovation in the Bioeconomy

Convenors: Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre, University of Oslo), Kean Birch (York University), Béatrice Cointe (TIK Centre, University of Oslo), Pierre Delvenne (University of Liège, SPIRAL)

In recent years, there has been a growing interest, both in STS and policy circles, in the so-called bioeconomy: an economy that would rely on biological resources, knowledge and technologies to fuel sustained and sustainable growth. The bioeconomy prompts us to reconsider the relations between economic and biological life and, more broadly, the articulation of politics, economic growth, science and nature. Indeed, it enacts a specific vision of this articulation: the promise of an economy that is at the same time innovative, transformative, regenerative, sustainable, responsible and environmentally friendly.

Policy and academic notions capturing such attempts at imagining and engineering economies that would grow within environmental limits and make good use of innovation abound: e.g. sustainable development, green growth, blue economy… Despite a wealth of conceptual propositions to make sense of these attempts, few detailed empirical studies so far have explicitly engaged with this conceptual work. How can we open up these promissory economies and trace the relations that constitute them?

This panel welcomes empirically and conceptually grounded contributions that interrogate the transformations in the way the economy relates to nature but also politics. In particular, contributions may address the following topics:



The incorporation of diverse values and valuation practices in the workings of the economy – and associated tensions


Concepts and methods to trace and analyse bioeconomies in economics, policies, markets, science


Relations between the regenerative and the reproductive, and growth and innovation


State-work and the notion of the public good in these bioeconomies




Best regards,
Béatrice Cointe

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