Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how genomes and barcodes, fused through the 'Barcoding of Life Initiative', re-assemble the global endeavour to characterise biological species and diversity; simultaneously establishing new moral circuitries of creativity, reciprocity and control in different sites of use.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research that examines how genomes and barcodes, fused through the digital infrastructures of the 'Barcoding of Life Initiative' (BOLI), effectively re-assemble global endeavours to characterise biological species and species diversity. I trace how BOLI's digital barcoding infrastructure comes to be used for the identification of species in different sites of application - fish markets, polluted freshwater lakes, and sites of sleeping sickness disease. As 'barcoding' travels it excites the imagination and creativity of its users. It also raises issues of 'computation, automation and control' (Ziewitz 2016). If 'control' through barcoding infrastructures once incorporated a kind of 'feedback' into existing taxonomic topologies, such control has now gained a very extended and distributed form. Whilst there is a strong sense of creative appropriation and forward movement associated with developments in BOLI, reciprocal ties and circulations become stretched and possibly fragile.