Short abstract:

This paper explores different modalities through which culture comes to matter for innovation and policy. This allows us to cast the spotlight on the co-stabilization between innovation and culture, the continuities within supposedly disruptive proposals, and patterns of control and exclusion.

Long abstract:

In this paper, we explore what can be gained by rethinking innovation and innovation policy more seriously through the lens of culture (see also Pfotenhauer et al. 2023). We explore three modalities in which culture comes to matter in the context of innovation (policy): First, innovation initiatives need to tap into cultural resources in order to be legible and acceptable. Second, cultural actors and formations need to come to terms with innovation to demonstrate their continued relevance and actively manage novelty and change. Third, innovation imperatives increasingly invade our popular understanding of (creative) culture, with tensions ensuing between those forms of creativity that can be valorized in entrepreneurial regimes and those that cannot. In our paper, we use various case studies from the city of Munich to illustrate each of these three points. We draw on Steve Hilgartner’s (2015, 2017) work on “vanguard visions” and “knowledge control regimes” as well as sensitivities from feminist STS to argue that innovation should not primarily be understood as a naturalized imperative of technological change and disruption, but as a material-discursive space that serves to capture and control the future – often by extending incumbent socio-economic structures from the past. What is more, the innovation discourse allows key actors to reconfigure key areas of social life – such as desirable forms of cultural expression or debates about the identity of a region – along exclusive criteria of commercial viability and fit with hegemonial norms.

Short abstract:

This contribution shows insights into sites of blueprint development projects, and contrast these with locally developed solutions. I will present the self-directed and self-maintained ecosystem of an Indigenous community, which can be seen an example of alternative futures in the active making.

Long abstract:

Grassroots innovation is a practice that challenges top-down development. Citizens operate in resource-scarce environments and develop solutions that address past, present, and future breakdowns. In this contribution I will show insights into sites of blueprint development projects that ended up as “design disasters” (Escobar 2018), and will contrast the failures with locally developed solutions. The contrast becomes clear through one particular ecosystem of a utopian ecosystem created by a community of practice and trust. This ecosystem, found in the West-Javanese mountains is self-directed, self-maintained and sustainable. It includes means of communications (a community radio and community TV) and access to information to improve the quality of life and experiment with agricultural practices (community internet). The tech stack (Bødker et al. 2016) is fuelled by renewable energy (micro-hydro plants and solar panels) and social elements crucial to the sustainability of the ecosystem, including a feeling of ownership and maintenance skills. Most importantly, alternative futures are being created not only through access to information, but also by recording knowledge and creating an example of sustainable self-directed development. Covertly, the actions also contribute to advocating for and protecting Indigenous rights. The goal of this contribution is to illustrate how grassroots communities reinvent development from the bottom-up to sustainably democratise and enable citizen participation to create self-directed progress in a postcolonial manner (Irani et al. 2010).

Short abstract:

This talk mobilizes theories of "technology sovereignty" to address how Argentinean biotechnology imaginaries get articulated through the development and promotion of the first GM wheat approved for human consumption.

Long abstract:

With the recent election of right-wing populist Javier Milei as president, the future of public science in Argentina is uncertain. Milei campaigned on promises to defund public R&D, and to cut environmental and health programs. Simultaneously, public/private partnerships in genetic engineering put the biotech sector in a “very small club” with Argentina ranking among the top countries for biotech (Stubrin et al 2023). Being one the few countries “with the capability to improve crops through modern biotechnology” (Patiño 2023), poises Argentinean biotech to disrupt the North-South knowledge transfer paradigm (Medina et al. 2014).

But Argentinean biotech is treading into highly contested territory to do so. Out of a public/private partnership has come the world’s first GM wheat approved for humans. HB4 Wheat is touted as a breakthrough for “regenerative” agriculture and proof that national S&T ought to be among the global technological elite. HB4 wheat was, however, designed to solve a problem partly created by GMO monocropping in Argentina (drought) and it fails to address related socioenvironmental impacts of ag biotech. We explore the transformation of Argentinean biotechnology imaginaries through attention to how HB4 wheat was designed and promoted. Drawing on Montenegro de Wit’s (2022) theory of technology sovereignty, we focus on innovation imaginaries in which Argentinean biotech could be the sector that resurrects the country’s troubled economy and global standing, even while that may only further the technological lock-in the sector currently finds itself (Marin et al. 2023; Rickards et al. 2017).

Short abstract:

The presentation will outline analytic approaches that can serve as guidance for future studies of innovation as a normative domain. I hope that this will contribute to the growing field by offering inspiration and structure to future STS research on innovation.

Long abstract:

Recent regional and national innovation policies indicate a revitalized role for the state and other central social institutions. However, while innovation theories call for ‘more state’, they continue to promote an apolitical and limited meaning of statehood with regards to innovation, where the principal focus is on the state as an economic entity. In this presentation I will use recent public events to distill a new meaning of innovation in relation to the state, regions and cultural identities. While innovation theory largely transpires from economic reason, where innovation is seen a rational expression of ‘good’ economic progress, I will take different position in which innovation is construed as a normative domain, where ideas and ideals of the ‘good’ plays out. With the use of instructive cases, I will outline some different analytic strategies for how to study innovation from a critical STS stance. The first analytic approach will draw out how innovation practices articulates the implicit morality of the ‘good’; the second approach analyzes the implicit social order understood to best cater to this end; the third approach concerns how innovation affects the social and political cohesion necessary for societies to operate as a polity.