Knowledge, place, and power: geographies of value in the bioeconomy

Abstract

The idea that there is an emerging “bioeconomy” characterized by the capture of the latent value found in biological material (e.g. cells, tissues, plants, etc.) has become a popular policy agenda since the mid-2000s. A number of scholars have also written about this intersection between the life sciences and capitalism, often drawing on anthropological and sociological perspectives to conceptualize the new socialities, subjectivities, and identities brought about by new biotechnologies. While these studies are undoubtedly a fruitful academic enterprise, they have also left a gap in our understanding of the bioeconomy because they have not discussed knowledge or knowledge production. This article focuses on this immaterial side of the bioeconomy, exploring the geographies of value in the bioeconomy that are constituted by intangible and immaterial resources and labor. The core argument is that value in the bioeconomy is created from geographical processes that both embed immateriality in particular places and, at the same time, abstract it in global standards and regulations.

Keywords:

• bioeconomy
• geographies of value
• life sciences
• immaterial labor

I Introduction

In the mid-2000s, both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission (EC) established policy agendas promoting the idea of a “bioeconomy.” Both focused on the supposed “latent value” in biological materials like genes, stem cells, tissue, etc. and natural resources like forests, crops, etc. These policy agendas are more than a reflection of the current and future state of the biological sciences and their economic exploitation, they constitute a means to drive current and future techno-scientific and economic developments through the re-configuration of societal institutions (see Birch 2006, Hilgartner 2007, Birch et al. 2010, Levidow et al. in press).

A burgeoning scholarly literature on this intersection between the life sciences and capitalism has sought to characterize this emerging relationship in a number of ways from the idea of “biovalue” (Waldby 2000) through “biocapital” (Rajan 2006) to that of “life as surplus” (Cooper 2008). However, the current scholarly analyses of the bioeconomy have been driven largely by an emphasis on the materiality of the bioeconomy; that is, on the social, political, and economic changes wrought by new understandings of extractable bodily material (e.g. genes, tissue) and bodily labor (e.g. clinical trial participants, tissue donors). This reflects the anthropological and sociological perspectives and in-depth methodological approaches of these analyses. While there is considerable value in such research, it does leave a gap in our understanding of the bioeconomy, which I seek to fill with this article.

The gap in the literature is the failure to address the “immaterial” side of the bioeconomy entailed in the focus on materiality. The immateriality, if you like, of the bioeconomy concerns the knowledge-based nature of the relationship between the life sciences and capitalism; i.e. the production of biological knowledge (or “bio-knowledges”) as well as the enclosure and commodification of these bio-knowledges through patenting, licensing, copyright, and so on. In mainstream policy circles such as the OECD and EC, knowledge has not only come to represent the main factor of production (Powell and Snellman 2004), it is also increasingly characterized as a potential commodity underpinned by an international intellectual property (IP) regime (Tyfield 2008, Zeller 2008). There is an important dynamic here that becomes evident with the commodification and privatization of these new bio-knowledges. What is apparent is that knowledge, as a collectively generated and public good underpinned by increasing levels of public expenditure on research and development in universities, firms, and government departments, is increasingly threatened by a modern-day enclosures movement in which an international IP regime excludes people from that collectively generated knowledge (May 2002, Jessop 2006). The implications of this dynamic are central to understanding the bioeconomy.

The creation of value in the bioeconomy depends on this apparent contradiction between open cooperation in knowledge production and privatized control and exploitation, an issue which has been highlighted by those working in the autonomist Marxism tradition (e.g. Morini and Fumagalli 2010, Marazzi 2011). In particular, they stress the growing importance of “immaterial” inputs, or what autonomist Marxists variously conceptualize as cognitive, embodied, relational, and immaterial labor (e.g. Lazaratto 1997, Holloway 2002, Vann 2004), especially as this relates to the shift from Fordism to biocapitalism (e.g. Morini and Fumagalli 2010, Marazzi 2011). From this perspective, knowledge, unlike fixed, tangible capital (e.g. machines, biological materials, natural resources, etc.), is presented as the key dynamic in capital accumulation: the key to value creation. This autonomist perspective provides a useful and interesting complement to existing literature on the relationship between capitalism and modern biotechnology, especially the sociological and anthropological approaches that emphasize the importance of new bio-materials, embodied or bodily labor, and so on (e.g. Waldby 2000, Franklin and Lock 2003, Parry 2004, Rajan 2006, etc.). It necessitates a focus on how new bio-knowledges are made alienable (i.e. ownable) and how they are then made valuable through market exchange.

My argument in this article is that value creation in the bioeconomy depends on a dual (and somewhat contradictory) process in which bio-knowledges are abstracted as objects (e.g. measurable things) at the same time as they remain intangible and tacit (e.g. personal skills or experience). In this sense the bioeconomy is not only about new forms and types of biological object (e.g. tissue, Waldby and Mitchell 2006) or “bodily labor” (e.g. clinical trial participants, Rajan 2006) as emphasized in a number of contributions to social studies of genetics. It is also about the dynamic between these material things – i.e. objects (or artifacts) and bodily labor – and immaterial things. It is, in this sense, necessary to conceptualize the (im)materiality of the bioeconomy, which means looking at the immaterial (e.g. bio-knowledge) in order to complement the current emphasis on materiality.

Here I want to outline the general argument I make in the rest of the article in order to provide some clarity to the later discussion. As argued above, the creation of value in the bioeconomy entails a dynamic between materiality and immateriality. This is a necessarily geographical process in that it involves both the embedding of bio-knowledges in specific places and the global abstracting of bio-knowledges from those places. These geographical processes constitute opposing and contradictory scalar effects (localizing and globalizing respectively), yet they are both necessary for creating value in the bioeconomy. On the one hand, without the embedding of bio-knowledges in particular places, it would be possible for anyone and everyone to do the same thing, to acquire and use the same knowledge. On the other hand, without the abstracting of these place-specific bio-knowledges it would be impossible to measure and to standardize them, and hence turn them into a commodity by making them alienable and excludable through (international) IP rights.

This article is a theoretical one, although I draw upon examples from existing empirical research on the life sciences and the bioeconomy. To set the groundwork for the article, I start by outlining some of the existing sociological and anthropological theories in the social studies of genetics as well as introducing the autonomist Marxist perspective (Section II). Subsequently I have split my core argument between the idea of embedding bio-knowledge in place and abstracting place in bio-knowledge in order to illustrate the geographies of value in the emerging bioeconomy (Section III). The argument in this section can be summarized as follows: first, bio-knowledges are embedded in specific places as a result of horizontal relationships and associated forms of market exchange, which produce localizing scale effects; second, place-based bio-knowledges are abstracted in universal standards as a consequence of discourses and associated forms of market exchange that seek to eliminate differences through systematization and standardization leading to the production of globalizing scale effects.

II Building on existing sociological and anthropological theories of the “bioeconomy”

A number of scholars have sought to conceptualize the relationship between capitalism and modern biotechnology over the last decade or so. So far, these have taken a largely sociological or anthropological approach. In his review article on these “species of biocapital,” Stefan Helmreich (2008) provides an in-depth discussion of the range, evolution, and inter-mingling of these theories within wider social theory. My intention is not to repeat his discussion here, but rather to point out some of the key theories in this literature in order to highlight a theoretical gap that needs filling. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to outline all of this literature in the space available here considering the plethora of concepts and accounts. These range from the less known “organic capital,” “genetic capital,” and “biowealth” to the better-known concepts of “biovalue,” “biocapital,” and “bioeconomics” (e.g. Waldby 2000, Rose 2001, Franklin and Lock 2003, Rajan 2006).

In his review, Helmreich (2008) differentiates between two main strands of theories – or “species” in his terms – addressing the bioeconomy. First, there is a Marxist-feminist strand that focuses on the changing production and, particularly, reproduction processes that result from (and inform) modern genetics (e.g. Franklin and Lock 2003). There is a specific focus on new biological objects like tissue samples, stem cells, etc. that, in the words of Sylvia Waldby (2002, p. 308), “involve a reorganization of the boundaries and elements of the human body” and therefore the reconfiguration of identity, sociality, and subjectivity. She goes on to argue that these new biological objects (or “fragments”) and technologies produce biovalue, defined as:

… a surplus value of vitality and instrumental knowledge which can be placed at the disposal of the human subject. The surplus value is produced through setting up certain kinds of hierarchies in which the marginal forms of vitality – the foetal, cadaverous and extracted tissue, as well as bodies and body parts of the socially marginal – are transformed into technologies to aid the intensification of vitality for other living beings. (Waldby 2000, p. 19)

Helmreich (2008, p. 471) defines the second strand of theories as Weberian-Marxist in that they are more focused on “relations of production” and “accountings of ethical subjectivity.” Despite the Weberian moniker Helmreich ascribes to these theories, however, it is notable that this strand is heavily influenced by the Foucauldian concept of biopolitics. It might be more apt, therefore, to term this strand as Foucauldian-Marxist – although this may have been too much of a contradiction for Helmreich. A key exponent of this Foucauldian perspective is Nikolas Rose (2001, 2007), especially in his discussion of “vital politics” – that is, the “politics of life itself” as his book is called – and the implications of new genetics for biopolitical subjectivities. He suggests that there is a “latent value” in biological material, representing “human desires and aspirations” from which it is possible to “extract a surplus – be it food, health or capital” (Rose 2007, pp. 17–18). Other scholars working from this perspective include the likes of Kaushik Sunder Rajan (2006) and Melinda Cooper (2008) whose books – Biocapital and Life as surplus respectively – have proved very popular. These two scholars focus more explicitly on the promissory and speculative value of new genetic technologies, linking these expectations to more recent concerns with the financialization (Krippner 2005) and neoliberalization (Birch and Mykhnenko 2010) of the economy.

Although it is not possible, for want of space, to go into too much depth in discussing the sociological and anthropological takes on the bioeconomy, it is important to highlight the aspects of these theories outlined above in order to position the debate about the creation of value in the bioeconomy. These sociological and anthropological theories focus on new forms of materiality (i.e. “fragments”) that arise from new genetics technologies such as tissue samples, stem cells, genes, etc. and new forms of bodily labor that characterize modern biotechnology, including participation in clinical trials, tissue donation, etc. No matter how fruitful these approaches prove to be, however, they do not properly address the importance of the knowledge and knowledge-labor that are implicated in these materialities. In order to address this gap, I want to draw on the insights from autonomist Marxism.

Scholars working in the autonomist tradition emphasize the important dynamic (or struggle) between constant capital (i.e. materials like machines and resources) and variable capital (i.e. immaterial inputs like knowledge-labor) (Holloway 2002). Autonomism is often associated with the work of Hardt and Negri (2000), but there is a wealth of other literature out there that contains a number of interesting concepts and analyses. The one I want to highlight here is the focus of these autonomist Marxists on “immaterial labour” (Lazzarato 1997). It plays a central role in what has been variously described as “cognitive capitalism” (Marazzi 2011), “informatic labour” (Vann 2004) and, of most interest in this article, biocapitalism outlined by Morini and Fumagalli (2010). The last pair argue that biocapitalism describes a new mode of regulation that has followed the collapse of Fordism. In biocapitalism value is generated from “production, reproduction, circulation and consumption” (ibid., p. 241 my emphasis), meaning that value creation is not reducible to one part of the process of capital accumulation and especially not to the production part by itself. Obviously, the autonomists point out that feminist scholars have repeatedly and for some time highlighted this key issue in relation to the unwaged work performed by women (see Marazzi 2011, pp. 48–49). Value is therefore created, not simply at the point when someone produces or purchases or consumes a commodity, but throughout the process. It now “lies in the intellectual and relational resources of subjects, and in their ability to activate social links that can be translated into exchange value” (Morini and Fumagalli 2010, p. 236). The epitome of this process would be Facebook, which has no value except for the performance of social relationships by all its users; thus, in Marazzi's (2011, p. 500) words, “the individual is the coproducer of what he [sic] consumes.” So as more individuals use a technology, the more valuable it becomes as users become unwaged laborers.

From this discussion it is evident that different types and forms of knowledge are centrally implicated in the creation of value. In the bioeconomy, this goes beyond the material, bodily labor theorized by the likes of Rajan (2006) and best exemplified by clinical trial participants. Rather it covers an enormous range of immaterial or knowledge labor. In the words of Morini and Fumagalli (2010, p. 236), biocapitalism entails:

… knowledge [that] is not explicit or objective, but rather relational: it encompasses the dynamic of a subjective knowledge that is “deeply rooted in action and in the engaging commitment to a specific context”. Cognitive labour organizations are interested not only in explicit knowledge, but also and more importantly in subjective (tacit) knowledge, everybody's opinions.

On the one hand, immaterial or cognitive labor involves tacit and subjective knowledge that is context-specific (i.e. embedded in a particular organization or region) and, we could add, relational-specific (i.e. relevant to a specific social group – e.g. scientists). On the other, it involves the “transfer of a series of productive-instrumental functions to the living body of the workforce” as fixed (or dead) capital (e.g. machines) is replaced by investment in explicit and objective knowledge (Marazzi 2011, p. 58) – that is, “immaterial (or abstract) capital.” Despite being immaterial, the latter also needs to be made explicit and objective because there is a need to measure, evaluate, and enclose the immaterial capital in order to recoup the often very large initial investment in the production of knowledge. Hence there is a need for new IP rights that extend ever wider across multiple jurisdictions. In thinking about this (im)material dynamic at the heart of the bioeconomy, it becomes evident that there are important geographies to this value creation. This is what I turn to next.

III Geographies of value in the bioeconomy

1 Scale and the dimensions of the bioeconomy

I want to briefly outline my arguments at the start of this section before going any further. Here I differentiate between two processes – embedding and abstracting – implicated in different forms of market exchange in the bioeconomy; they produce different scalar effects, one localizing and the other globalizing. Both of these processes constitute value creation in the bioeconomy. The geographies of these two processes are the consequence of the differences in market relationships which are central to any understanding of value creation because value is realized through market exchange from both a political-economic and a sociological-anthropological perspective. Before outlining this argument, however, I need to explain the geographical concept of scale.

In thinking about the two processes it is important to take a multi-scalar approach in order to understand the bioeconomy. Such an undertaking, however, is not without its own problems. In particular, as Jessop et al. (2008) have argued recently, the privileging of a particular geographical dimension – such as scale, territory, place, and network – entails the problematic assumption that one particular dimension (e.g. scale, territory, place, or network) represents the “totality” of social relations. It is not my intention to do that here. However, I want to utilize the concept of scale to understand the relationship between the material and immaterial in the bioeconomy, especially how the processes of embedding and abstracting produce particular scalar effects that create value from new bio-knowledges. In order to do this, it is important to emphasize that scale is as much constituted by social processes as social processes are constituted by scale. It is for this reason that it is useful to consider the relationship between different types of market exchange and their scalar effects.1

According to Neil Smith (2008 [1984], pp. 181–196) spatial scales such as urban or local, national and global are differentiated “absolute spaces” that are necessary for capital accumulation. The scalar dimensions of social relations represent both their magnitude (i.e. size) and their scope (i.e. reach) in that certain forms of social relation (e.g. governments) produce a certain type of space (e.g. nation-state) that has a specific reach (e.g. national borders). Recent critical accounts of the concept of scale are dominated by the idea of scale as scope, representing scale as a relational process thereby problematizing the idea of vertical hierarchies at the same time as they eschew horizontal frameworks (e.g. Marston et al. 2005). In contrast, however, an understanding of scale as size as well as reach is important for two main reasons.

First, relational and especially network approaches flatten relationships between social actors so that these analyses are “less adept at locating the asymmetrical geometries of power” (MacLeod and Jones 2007, p. 1186). More specifically, and as work on “global justice networks” by Cumbers et al. (2008) illustrates, hierarchies are still prevalent in networks whether or not scholars want to avoid these vertical characterizations. Therefore, such vertical–hierarchical relations still need to be taken into account. Second, while it is important to recognize that scales are “intertwined” (Mansfield 2005), different scales also have distinct characteristics in that “certain scalar properties of an object, process or activity make a difference to the way it operates or the ways that groups act upon its knowledge-context” (Jonas 2006, p. 401). That is, different social processes can have different emergent scalar effects in that they are not merely the sum of their parts (Sunley 2008); in this sense, size matters. Most important to note is that any discussion of scalar dimensions and effects cannot focus explicitly on either local or global scales since in both cases this only captures part of the issue.

On the one hand, for example, the privileging of localized social relations and their scalar effects at the expense of other geographical dimensions means that the role of power is underplayed, especially in the valorization of local cooperation, tacit knowledge and knowledge sharing in local innovation networks. Globalized market relations, on the other hand, relate more to “top-down” abstractions (and therefore “linear” abstractions in that they posit the direct influence of global actors on national and then local actors), such as international trade rules (including IP rights), which are discursive processes of evaluation (e.g. standardization) more than innovation processes. In this sense, certain scales are produced by a process of “abstracting” in which place-specific bio-knowledges are discursively constructed in universal standards, regulations and commoditization; other scales are produced by a process of “embedding” as bio-knowledges are nested in existing social relations underpinned by specific institutional arrangements. It is these processes that I explore next.

2 The embedding of bio-knowledge in place

I emphasize “embedding” as a process to indicate that bio-knowledges are not simply produced in place (i.e. in situ) but that they are also incorporated into specific places – which have their own socio-institutional histories – through flows of new knowledge, people and things. I thereby hope to convey both the relational and “nesting” nature of this process. However, in thinking about how bio-knowledges are embedded in place it is evident that tacit or subjective forms of knowledge are more central to value creation. Here, I want to look at market exchange because exchange represents the realization of said value from this immaterial labor. Subsequently I want to outline how a particular form of market exchange produces specific scalar effects. More precisely, I argue that it is the social and subjective relations of bio-knowledge production that lead to the circulation of value through exchange. However, instead of assuming that all markets operate in a similar fashion, at whatever scale, it is important to distinguish between the actors, the processes, and the scalar effects produced by different types of market exchange.

To start then, there is a difference between the “social order” and “role” of actors in different types of market as outlined by Patrick Aspers (2007). Through the process of embedding, commodities come to embody the status and switch-role of certain market actors who engage in exchange (see Aspers 2007, 2009). First, the status of an actor is based on the idea that in some markets (e.g. those for artwork, aesthetic goods, etc.) it is the quality of a commodity – its use value – which has the most value and that such a commodity cannot be separated from the status of its producer because the producer has certain characteristics that impact on the judgment of quality (e.g. ability, style sense, etc.). In relation to the bioeconomy, the key actors are scientists in universities and dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs) whose capabilities are central to value creation. In particular, there is a link between these actors (e.g. scientists) and the value of a particular product (e.g. platform technology) because it is the tacit knowledge held by the producer that is valuable and not just the product itself (see Zucker et al. 2002). Without this tacit knowledge, the product loses its value because it will not work as expected. Second, the switch-role of an actor refers to markets where the identities of the buyer and seller are not set; a buyer can become a seller and vice versa (Aspers 2007). Again, the bioeconomy can be characterized in these terms as firms draw on numerous knowledge sources during their own innovation cycle and, in turn, provide knowledge to other innovators to produce other commodities (Birch 2008). Thus the production of a “biotechnology” commodity relies on access to diverse tacit knowledge shared in proximity, which is important because of the status of the actors involved, and becomes embedded in certain places because of close social relations.

The bioeconomy is embedded in certain sites that represent centers of expertise where actors are nested within specific institutional contexts that encourage certain forms of market relation and interaction (see Cooke 2007). However, such interaction (and monitoring) between actors in these contexts does not occur automatically, rather it develops over time. Consequently it is important to consider how this happens. The primary reason for such cumulative interaction is the existence of institutions that produce a shared culture among market actors, both in particular places (e.g. regions) and across scales (e.g. international events, knowledge networks, etc.). According to Carruthers (1997, p. 3), such institutions represent “organized sets of constitutive relationships, expectations and cognitive frameworks” so they represent “more than just social relationships.” However, it is also important to distinguish between institutional theories to avoid the overly deterministic and constraining concept of institutions that is used in economics (e.g. rational choice) and some historical analyses (see Campbell 1997, Campbell and Pedersen 2001). More relevant to explain the embedding of actors in the bioeconomy is organizational institutionalism which emphasizes the influence that institutions have on the strategies of actors (Campbell 1997, Carruthers 1997), rather than on their motivations (see below). The “appropriateness” of certain actions – within a particular frame of meanings and expectations – enables social actors to make their practices appear sensible to other actors leading to complementary activities. Thus institutions enable individuals, firms, and other organizations to pursue certain strategies because shared meanings make these actions and relationships contextually relevant and complementary at the same time that they differentiate one place from another. In the bioeconomy, for example, there are numerous examples of attempts to build local institutional support for this very reason (Rosiello 2007). However, it is notable that whether or not these policies achieve their stated aims (i.e. increasing innovation) is beside the point since the representation of a “biotech cluster,” underpinned by supportive institutional arrangements, helps to constitute certain places as appropriate sites for the pursuit of the bioeconomy (Birch 2007a), thereby attracting and embedding actors in those places and incorporating (and embedding) new bio-knowledge flows.

The consequence of this place-specific institutional embedding is that certain types of social relationships are structurally possible and economically valuable; namely cooperative market exchange relations. This point draws on Granovetter's (2002) argument that there is a need to distinguish between “horizontal” and “vertical” market relationships. The former relationships map on to the idea of embedding and illustrate why the bioeconomy is dispersed across different locations; the latter will be discussed in the next section. Such horizontal relationships produce cooperation (as an effect) – in contrast to compliance – in that they involve non-hierarchical interaction between actors for whom the resultant trust enables those actors to collaborate with and complement one another without the attendant fear of exploitation, thereby further embedding them in certain social relations. In embeddedness terms, these actors are bound together by strong ties that encourage further interaction and discourage malfeasance (Granovetter 1985). Such relationships are possible where actors are proximate to one another because existing interaction and monitoring provides information on other actors that is less asymmetrical than vertical relationships since it is harder to “block” knowledge flows when in close proximity. However, proximity does not necessarily mean that actors have to be spatially close, since there are other forms of proximity (see Boschma 2005). Thus social (e.g. same social status), organizational (e.g. same company), spatial (e.g. same region) and cognitive (e.g. same language) proximity create cooperative effects. Returning to the bioeconomy, Vallas and Kleinman (2008) argue that a new hybrid culture has co-evolved in universities and DBFs with each side influencing the activities of the other. One particular outcome of their informal codes of conduct is that scientists often neglect formal conventions regarding intellectual property (IP) that limit knowledge transfer.2 In this case, I would argue that it is the social and cognitive proximity between academics and industry scientists that helps to produce cooperation.

From this perspective then, economic value is created by the practices and strategies of actors embedded in institutional contexts that (re-)produce horizontal social relationships, which, in turn, create localizing – and differentiating – scalar effects situating tacit forms of bio-knowledge in specific places that are relationally tied into broader networks and flows. It is the specific form of market exchange – the actors, institutions, relationships – that produce these scalar effects and ultimately enable the creation of value from the situated context of bio-knowledge practices. In particular, the embedding process provides DBFs with an advantage through access to complementary, embodied, and tacit knowledge (e.g. scientists' skills and experience) that helps to differentiate them from other firms precisely because they are embedded in particular places and at particular points in the flow of bio-knowledge. It is this differentiation that provides an advantage because firms are able to compete on uniqueness rather than price (as opposed to value); for example, this differentiation enables the production of non-positional commodities.

However, the embedding of bio-knowledge and its scalar effects are not enough to explain the creation of value in the bioeconomy as debates around the multi-scalar dimensions of innovation processes help illustrate (e.g. Coe and Bunnell 2003). In particular, any such argument needs to avoid the assumption that a single scalar lens (e.g. local, region) is adequate for understanding knowledge and innovation processes, especially if such an emphasis is at the expense of national and global scales (see MacKinnon et al. 2002). Thus it is important to note that value creation in the bioeconomy also involves the construction and enforcement of “abstracting” discourses (e.g. protocols, commodity standards, IP rights, etc.) which enable market actors to enclose new bio-knowledges, thereby making it alienable and exchangeable. Without such an abstracting process, bio-knowledges would be accessible to all and sundry without charge; crucially this process has to have certain scalar effects (i.e. it has to be universalizing and globalizing) or it would still be a simple matter for market actors to access bio-knowledge from locations where IP rights, for example, are non-existent or not enforced.

3 The abstracting of place in bio-knowledge

I am using “abstracting” as a verb to avoid the implication that the process of standardization, accompanied by the construction of new regulations, IP rights and commodity forms, is a unidirectional process in which global discourses produce “abstractions”; instead it is meant to convey the multidirectional, unfinished, and continuous circulation of discursive strategies between their origins somewhere and their extension elsewhere. Such discourses play a crucial role in abstracting contextually specific and relational practices that embed bio-knowledges in specific places and flows (as outlined above), thereby standardizing them so that certain practices are universalized. Here bio-knowledge is intrinsically tied to the re-configuration of value in market exchange through the discursive calculation and evaluation of a commodity's function and its use. This has specific scalar effects in the way that these discourses both reach across and cover different political-economic jurisdictions. Again, market exchange involves the realization of value, but in this case it is the abstracting process that standardizes, de-contextualizes, and systematizes commodities in a fluctuating and substitutable regime based on the idea of relative market price – and how to achieve this price – rather than the immanent quality of a particular commodity (Lambek 2008).

Again it is useful to start by considering the key bioeconomy actors in this process and their role in market exchange. In contrast to the embedding process, abstracting is a process in which the “status” and “switch-role” of actors are less relevant, if not totally irrelevant. Instead, and again drawing on Aspers (2007, 2009), it is the “standard” role of actors in market exchange that is important because a commodity's material and contractual conditions enable the evaluation of a commodity's function, especially in terms of market price, through the standardization of evaluative criteria rather than through reliance on the commodity's producer. Such market relations entail a separation of the commodity from the producer and its establishment as a fictitious commodity (Jessop 2007), thereby disconnecting the producer from both the commodity and the consumer. Furthermore, the “fixed” role of market actors – in that sellers and buyers are distinct from one another (Aspers 2007) – means that exchange is based on the comparative evaluation of the object itself rather than the status of the actors involved. In the bioeconomy, the key actors are national (and increasingly supranational) states – especially key state agencies such as product regulators, patent offices, etc. – and the large transnational corporations (TNCs) that are able to engage in regulatory arbitrage between different national and supranational systems.

Again institutional analysis provides a useful insight into the process of abstracting in market exchange. Here market relationships and roles are institutionalized in a specific “form of integration” in which embedded bio-knowledges and practices are replaced by the contractual and standardized forms of market exchange described by Polanyi (1957). Instead of institutions providing a framework for appropriate action, however, it is the institutionalization of certain discourses – establishing the motivation for actions – that influence meanings and set standards, constraining action within a “logic of consequentiality” (Campbell 1997, Carruthers 1997). In this perspective, institutionalization shapes the goals and motivation of actors rather than representing strategies for achieving those goals. It does so by “shaping patterns of interaction, opportunity structures and the distribution of power” (Campbell 1997, p. 22) and results from struggles over group interests and ideologies (e.g. the pursuit of profit versus “open” knowledge). There are several examples of this institutionalization of abstracting discourses in the bioeconomy. One is the “patent coalition” described by Tyfield (2008) and comprising US universities and DBFs as well as pharmaceutical TNCs that managed to promote a new global IP regime (i.e. Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS) in the Uruguay Round of the GATT negotiations. This coalition was instigated and dominated by TNCs like Pfizer, which sought to integrate IP rights into trade policy in order to expand their global markets. A more recent example is the specific knowledge-based bio-economy (KBBE) agenda pursued by the European Commission (EC) in the Seventh Framework Programme. This KBBE agenda has oriented research funding towards strategic aims established by European Technology Platforms (ETPs),3 which were established to represent the views of all relevant stakeholders. However, since the ETPs are “industry-led,” especially by TNCs, this means that their priorities have been oriented towards market-driven innovation (Birch et al. 2010, Levidow et al. in press). Thus the institutionalization of particular interests through discursive strategies establishes a series of constraints on embedded practices by abstracting meanings and standards that then cover and cross multiple political-economic borders. This, in turn, leads actors to imitate, rather than complement, one other and thereby forces them to engage in coercive rather than cooperative forms of market relations because they are necessarily competing for the same resources once they copy each another.

The institutionalization of the abstracting process has a globalizing tendency in that it extends standardization across territorial borders, which means that it is then possible to universalize the evaluation of commodities and competitive relations, thereby enabling market exchange between different and distinct places. In so doing the process entails the establishment of vertical market relationships that (re)produce power relations. So, in contrast to the effects of horizontal relationships (i.e. cooperation through trust), vertical relationships can be characterized as relationships that produce compliance underpinned by power asymmetries (Granovetter 2002). Although the outcomes are similar in that both horizontal and vertical relations enable the realization of value through market exchange, the scalar effects are different because they contribute in different ways to the creation of value through different types of market exchange. For example, vertical relationships lack the strong ties of horizontal ones and are instead based on weak ties (Granovetter 1985): these weak ties then provide the strategic coupling and decoupling of specific localizing practices with broader globalizing discourses. In this network structure the key bioeconomy actors – that is, (supra-)national states and large TNCs – can coordinate or, more importantly, block knowledge flows and market exchange between other types of actors situated in specific places. In this sense then, the abstracting process and attendant standardization represent “modes and norms of evaluation [that] both reflect and reproduce the power, of prevailing social relations of value” (Lee et al. 2008, p. 1114).

The spread of standardization leads to evaluations of the market price of “bio-” science, innovation and technologies becoming virtual (see Carrier 1997, Miller 1998, 2003), in that commodity standards, regulations, and protocols “abstract” contextually specific and relationally specific bio-knowledges, meaning that these bio-knowledges are treated as universal and equivalent and, therefore, alienable and exchangeable. This discursive process constructs a generalized set of interests (e.g. private ownership) to replace the specificity of diverse, disparate, and varied practices embedded in specific places. For example, “discourses of innovation” circulate through market reports, policy documents, and academic research as well as through teaching and presentations by business experts (Bunnell and Coe 2001). Such flows of “economic” ideas have been termed the “cultural circuit of capital” by Nigel Thrift and others and relate to the production and distribution of knowledge by a transnational business elite including “management consultants, management gurus and especially business schools” (Olds and Thrift 2005, p. 272, also Leyshon et al. 2005).

Ultimately this standardization produces two scalar effects. First, it abstracts certain contextually specific practices and relations so that they can serve as virtual prescriptions for evaluating value, which can then be applied elsewhere, and, second, it naturalizes these prescriptions as universally sensible and therefore universally legitimate.4 Furthermore, this abstracting is not limited to transnational business elites, but is promulgated by national and supranational state actors as well: for example, the dominant theme of the EC's innovation meta-narrative is the “instrumentalization” of science (see Felt et al. 2007). Here scientific knowledge is tied explicitly to an innovation paradigm based on the “economics of techno-scientific promises” resulting from biotechnology and other new technologies (ibid., p. 24). The EC's meta-narrative serves to enroll support for government intervention, financial investment, and other policies through the evaluation of the promises and expectations of techno-science that predominantly standardizes “intangibles” (e.g. patents, licensing) as alienable assets in industrial sectors like the life sciences (see Orsi and Coriat 2006, p. 171). Thus abstracting furthers the global commodification of bio-knowledges by standardizing new forms of IP rights around the world – many of which were first established in the USA and then imitated elsewhere (Birch 2007b, Tyfield 2008) – and incorporating techno-scientific standards in other policy areas such as development aid (Essex 2008).

The abstracting process illustrates how the creation of value in the bioeconomy depends on the reproduction of power through the standardization of contextually specific bio-knowledges in the form of IP rights, commodity standards and protocols. These are established to encourage and support the bioeconomy sectors (see Orsi and Coriat 2005, Prudham 2007) and, in so doing, they constitute a universal – i.e. de-contextualized and systematized – form of market exchange that extends across several different national political economies. The scalar effects of this process are, therefore, produced by contractual exchange relations enabled by the abstracting standardization of commodities through the institutionalization of power asymmetries. As a political-economic agenda, the bioeconomy depends upon this standardization and globalizing spread of IP rights. What this means is that value can be captured from collectively, tacitly, and contextually produced bio-knowledges (e.g. in universities) when previously this had not been possible: for example, a series of changes to different national patent regimes around the world – one following another in the fear of lost competitiveness – has meant that living organisms can now be commodified in several jurisdictions where once they could not (Zeller 2008).

IV Conclusions

What should be evident by now is that it is not enough to argue that there are certain local, national or global processes that enable the creation of value in the bioeconomy; furthermore, it is not credible to emphasize either the embedding of knowledge or the abstracting of place as the key process. Even from a purely analytical perspective, it is important to reject simple dichotomies between geographical dimensions and instead try to incorporate multi-scalar relations and effects in any approach. In summary, value creation in the bioeconomy, underpinned by an (im)materiality dynamic, has geographical dimensions resulting from the processes of embedding and abstracting; these processes and their scalar effects, in turn, constitute value creation in the bioeconomy.

In the above discussion I considered how the dual process of embedding and abstracting constitutes the multi-scalar geographies of value creation. Cooperation and power are centrally positioned in this dual process. First, cooperation arises from the embedding of bio-knowledges in distinct and differentiated institutional contexts – constituting localizing scalar effects – which then enable actors to pursue strategies that are not constrained by consequentialist motivations but can complement one another: they are not inhibited by competition for a limited amount of resources. Furthermore, the realization of value through market exchange is built on the role of these actors as sources of value in themselves, in that their knowledge and status cannot be divorced from the thing they produce. In turn, their practices produce localizing (or differentiating) scalar effects through the promotion of proximity; for example, there are fewer opportunities to “block” knowledge and more opportunities to interact when proximate. However, such scalar effects, constituted by horizontal relationships, are not in themselves sufficient for the creation of value.

Second then, power asymmetries arise from the abstracting of institutionally specific practices in certain forms of discourse, particularly through the standardization of bio-knowledges in de-contextualized and systematized evaluations that constitute the globalizing (or universalizing) scalar effects spreading international standards, conventions, and property rights. The institutionalization of standardization and commodification though IP is necessary to evaluate bio-knowledges' worth (i.e. market price) and function in certain forms of market exchange, ultimately enabling the realization of value through the comparison of “standardized” commodities. Such standardization produces globalizing scalar effects through the construction of competitive markets whose size and reach make global monopolies tempting for TNCs operating in high value-added sectors where investment is expensive (e.g. the bioeconomy).

In this way, cooperation and power represent opposing and contradictory scalar effects, yet they are both necessary for value creation implying that such dynamic effects are central to the bioeconomy. First, without the embedding of bio-knowledges there would be no differentiation between specific practices and abstracting discourses since it would be possible for anyone and everyone to do the same thing if there are no specificities to social relations. Second, without the abstracting of these institutionally specific practices there would be no similarity in the form of standardization and property rights to make bio-knowledges alienable and excludable as a commodity. However, neither of these processes is enough in itself: the creation of value in the bioeconomy is dependent upon the relationship between difference and similarity as outlined in literature on economic anthropology (see Graeber 2001, p. 15). In short, the embedding of bio-knowledges in localizing practices (i.e. difference) does not produce value unless there is a corresponding standardization of such practices through globalizing discourses (i.e. similarity) to enable the comparative and systematized evaluation of new bio-knowledge, its function and its social meaning across multiple political economies and scales.

The implications of this analysis for the life sciences are profound. First, the bioeconomy is dependent upon cooperative, complementary, and open knowledge relations, often funded by government rather than private sector organizations. That means that the enclosure of knowledge behind IP has a detrimental impact on the production of new knowledge; this has become evident in the increasing promotion of “open science” projects and schemes (e.g. Innovative Medicines Initiative) in biomedical research (Hope 2008). Second, in order to capture value from the bioeconomy, private sector firms are often dependent upon coercive strategies which inhibit their ability to engage in open relationships. There are good reasons for these strategies, obviously; e.g. small firms need to protect their immaterial assets (e.g. knowledge) while large firms want to protect their markets. The balancing of these conflicting demands, often between more than two firms, necessitates new forms of incentive structure (e.g. royalties rather than simple payments) and different forms of competition (e.g. not simply on price). Third, the contradictions between these two imperatives of the bioeconomy mean that there is frequent conflict between techno-scientific development and value creation; unfortunately, the former will most probably suffer at the hands of the latter. So the overall implication of this conceptual discussion is that the bioeconomy is caught between competing imperatives that are liable to hold up new developments, knowledges, and products until the contrasting demands of these imperatives are resolved. One possible solution is the already noted interest in open science projects, but whether or not these are adequate has yet to be shown.

Notes

It is important to acknowledge that scale is a contested concept as the recent debates on the “social construction of scale” illustrate (e.g. Mansfield 2005, Marston et al. 2005, Jonas 2006, Jessop et al. 2008).

Vallas and Kleinman (2008) also show that scientists in universities have, however, started to become more protective of their research for other reasons, namely academic status, which has an impact on knowledge sharing.

http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/.

A pertinent example of this type of knowledge and discursive process, particularly relevant to knowledge-based industries, is the involvement of Michael Porter in the late 1990s in the development of Scotland's “cluster” strategy (Rosiello 2007). This led to the identification of biotechnology as a key industrial sector and support for a clear “regional” science policy that has been extended across a number of institutional domains (Kitagawa 2009).