The Dictionary of Human Geography (14 page)

biophilosophy
A term associated with a long history of deliberations in Western thought from Aristotle, through natural his tory and evolutionary theory to post genomic biology, on the question ?What is life?? (Margulis and Sagan, 2000). Two aspects of these deliberations are particularly influential today in academic and, to some extent, popular debates about the always urgent business of living. The first is the philosophy of biology (or the philosophy of organism), in which theoretical biologists and philosophers since the nineteenth century have been con cerned with elucidating the principles of organization that characterize life informed by the changing practices and paradigms of biological knowledge (see Doyle, 1997). These principles primarily concern the pro cesses of growth, decay, reproduction, devel opment and adaptation. Here, the question ?What is life?? is frequently articulated as an epistemological question about how and why the study of biology (living things) differs from other fields of study. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Biophilosophy, on the other hand, repre sents a critique of the philosophy of biology in the sense that it is more interested in pos ing the same question in ontological terms that interrogate the precarious register of ?life? as a means of thinking past human/animal/ machine categorical divisions. In this, it is less concerned with describing the universal essence of life than with tracing through its ceaseless multiplicity. Here, the focus is on the network of relations that always take the living organism outside itself and the morphogenic impulses of replication and differentiation, multiplicity and singularity through which the flux of worldly becomings takes, holds and changes shape. It is now most closely associated with a ?vitalist? cur rent that runs through Leibniz and Spinoza, Bergson and Whitehead to Deleuze (see Ansell Pearson, 1999), and is concerned with the life force that ?insinuates itself into the habits and repetitions of matter with out becoming contained by materiality? (Bergson, 1983 [1907], p. 126). This is one of a number of important threads weaving through non representational theory that has become so influential in geography and other social sciences over the past five years or so. sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Ansell Pearson (1999); Bergson (1983 [1907]); Doyle (1997); Margulis and Sagan (2000); Whitehead (1929). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
biopolitics, biopower
Terms coined by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his writings on medicine, discipline and sexuality (see Foucault, 1978 [1976], 2003 [1997], 2008 [2004]), which refer to power over life. Foucault traces the emergence of this particu lar practice to Europe in the seventeenth cen tury, where instead of political rule being primarily over territories (see territory) and only secondarily over the people within them, it moved to being over individuals and the populations of which they were part, particu larly in terms of their biological and physical characteristics. Power is exercised over the in dividual body and the collective body of the population. Instead of the sovereign power to take life, this new biopower is the power to make, sustain or remove life. Foucault was particularly interested in how, as political rule becomes increasingly medicalized, it is sim ultaneously mathematicized, with the develop ment of measures and statistical techniques. Biopower is the tool by which the group of living beings understood as a population is measured in order to be governed, which is in turn closely connected to the political ra tionality of liberalism (see governmental ity). Under the broad term of biopower, Foucault examined a range of institutional practices and knowledges, including public health, housing campaigns, mechanisms for control of disease and famine, sexual behav iour, work patterns, and the treatment and organization of social, sexual and physical ab normality. His writings on this topic are part of a wider project understanding rationalities of government and the birth of the modern subject, and are interested in how power produces and shapes individuals as subjects of knowledge. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Since his death, there have been several significant extensions of Foucault?s theses. Although most of his work concentrated on europe, his lectures on race (2003) have proved influential in thinking about colonial and post colonial modalities ofpower and pol itical violence, including war (see Stoler, 1995; Agamben, 1998; Mbembe, 2003). Sev eral scholars have focused on the bio political implications of contemporary biomedical and genomic research for the intensifying medica lization of society (see Rabinow and Rose, 2006b; Rose, 2006b: cf. medical geog raphy). As their work shows, developments in the life sciences now spiral far beyond ques tions of health to address species being, and this has prompted several scholars to argue that security practices are being driven by a ?toxic combination? of geopolitics and biopolitics (Dillon, 2007; Dillon and Lobo Guerrero, 2008). (NEW PARAGRAPH) An important stream of work on contempor ary biopolitics seeks to show how the advance of particular techniques, notably biometrics, has profound political and politico geographical consequences. Biometrics literally the meas (NEW PARAGRAPH) urement of life takes unique physical or behavioural traits such as DNA, fingerprints, iris scans or gait (the manner of walking) in order to build up a profile of an individual to enhance the workings of security systems. Much work has been done to extend these insights in analyses of the ?war on terror? and its derivatives (see terrorism) (Amoore, 2006; Reid, 2006; Dauphinee and Masters, 2007; Gregory, 2008a). se (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dillon and Lobo Guerrero (2008); Esposito (NEW PARAGRAPH) ; Gregory (2008a); Rabinow and Rose (2006b). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
bioprospecting
The exploration, collection and testing of biological materials in search of genetic, biochemical, morphological or physiological features that may be of value for commercial development. In certain senses it is an extension of age old practices by which people have learned to benefit from their bio physical (and especially plant) environments. However, the ?social and spatial dynamics? (Parry, 2004) that underlie such activity have changed so dramatically in the past 30 years that bioprospecting can today be most usefully regarded as a significantly new articulation of that entanglement. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Specifically, three related but distinguish able developments have provided new oppor tunities for business and science to come together to detach biological materials and associated knowledges from their contexts, so as better to exploit them elsewhere. First, a series of economic developments has served to make bioprospecting profitable. With the emergence of biodiversity as an organizing trope and its framing as a valuable resource through the rhetoric of ?green developmental ism?, the notion of ?selling nature to save it? has become legitimized. Second, a series of technical developments has served to make bioprospecting practical. In particular, the transformation of biology associated with the emergence of information technologies has made the manipulation of the genetic code of organisms the basis of its value. Finally, a ser ies of developments in international property law has served to make bioprospecting legal. In two major multilateral agreements the 1992 Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) and the 1994 Agreement on Trade related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) much of the world?s biological material has been designated as ownable in various senses, and thus a legitimate object for transaction and exchange. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The situation that has emerged from these three developments is profoundly politicized (Dutfield, 2004). For advocates, bioprospect ing can deliver assistance ranging from the financial to the educational to those commu nities in which it takes place, as well as contributing to the production of new pharmaceutical and other products. For critics, bioprospecting is biopiracy (Shiva, 1998 (NEW PARAGRAPH) ), in that it fails to adequately recognize or reward the traditional knowledge of the peoples who have cultivated of modified the properties that make a given organism valu able. Questions of what should be ownable (even in a temporary form) are another matter. Only by tracing the sorts of benefit sharing agreements in a particular case is one likely to get beyond the terms of this increasingly polarized debate (Castree, 2003a). Nb (NEW PARAGRAPH)
bioregionalism
An ecological philosophy and movement advocating the new ecological politics of place, born in San Francisco in the 1970s. Bioregions are defined by two kinds of mapping. First, the tools of climatology, geo morphology and natural history are used to map ?geographic terrains? with distinctive eco logical characteristics. Second, descriptions of sense of pLace or ?terrains of consciousness? by those who live within them refine the boundaries of these bioregions. Both the approach and practice of bioregionalism have been widely criticized as analytically and politically misconceived in the context of global social and environmental problems and processes. sw (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) List (1993); Sale (1991). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
biosecurity
Biosecurity is a state and intra state response to the cross boundary move ments ofnon human living things, particularly those organisms that are considered a threat to human, ecological and economic welfare. It has at least three elements. First, there is the attempt to manage the movements of pests and diseases (cf. disease, diffusion of). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Attention is focused on nation states and their disease statuses. These regional disease zones sometimes map on to other distinctions between North and South or Rich and Poor, mappings that are far from accidental and not without consequence (Davis, 2005). Within the state, specific sites are earmarked for bio security measures: these include airports, seaports and increasingly farms (Donaldson and Wood, 2004). Second, there are the attempts to reduce the effects of invasive species on so called indigenous flora and fauna (Bright, 1999). Third, there are the at tempts to reduce the risks of microbiological materials being used as weapons. All three practices link together geopoLitics and bio geography, throwing up real tensions be tween movement and stasis, nations and natures (Clark, 2002). sjh (NEW PARAGRAPH)
biotechnology
The term is perhaps most usefully defined by a phrase as simple as ?the uses of life? (to quote the title of one history of the concept: see Bud, 1993). Those search ing for more technically precise versions should refer to Bains? (2003) A Z on the sub ject. Although vague, this formulation has the virtue of getting across two of the more im portant things about biotechnology; namely, that it is both a very broad term and one that is confused and contested. Starting with the latter point, when one reviews the litera ture on the subject, it swiftly becomes appar ent that there is nothing like an agreed definition of biotechnology. For some the notion covers everything from the ancient art of brewing through plant breeding and chem ical engineering all the way to modern tech niques of genetic manipulation, because all of these activities result from a coming together of human ingenuity, technical intervention and biological materials. For others, biotech nology is a frontier technology that should restrict the term to only the most recent elements of this long history; namely the proliferation of technical possibilities in the late twentieth/early twenty first century around the convergence of an informational biology, a neo LiberaL economic context and extensive legal protections on inteLLectuaL property. What is perhaps most significant about these competing positions is how they are mobilized during the many debates per taining to biotechnology. One hears more of the former if the aim is reassurance and when long track records of safety are involved and more of the latter if the aim is to boost or debunk the technology by invoking its revolutionary novelty. Both accounts can be heard at the same time (as in some discussions of GM crops in the USA) when the aim is to make products appear at once ?substantially equivalent? to what has gone before and radic ally new and worthy of patents and payment. Even if one sticks with the restricted take on biotechnology, the term is used to cover a diverse range of activities. The colour coded categorization of biotechnology in common use gives some sense of this: (NEW PARAGRAPH) Red signifies biotechnology as applied to medical processes. This can include the genetic modification of bacteria and yeast in the development of drugs or the direct manipulation of a person?s gen ome in an attempt to prevent or cure disease. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Green signifies biotechnology as applied to agricultural processes. Most notably (and controversially), this includes the development of transgenic plants specif ically designed (for example) to express or be resistant to a certain pesticide. (NEW PARAGRAPH) White (sometimes) grey signifies bio technology as applied to industrial pro cesses. Examples here include growing organisms engineered to produce a use ful chemical, or bacteria that help break down certain chemicals (as used to clear up oil spills). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Blue, finally, signifies biotechnology as applied to aquatic, coastal or marine processes. Little used as yet but a rap idly expanding field, applications here focus on extracting useful substances from water dwelling bacteria and other organisms. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Biotechnology in all its hues has long been identified as an area that provides both chal lenges and opportunities for geography (Katz and Kirby, 1991). Following a series of more recent provocations (e.g. Castree, 1999c; What more, 1999a; Spencer and Whatmore, 2001), a body of literature is now finally emerging within the discipline that is taking these oppor tunities and challenges seriously see, for ex ample, the articles collected in special issues edited by Bridge, Marsden and McManus (2003) and Greenhough and Roe (2006). Even more encouragingly, the best of this work is eschewing the familiar temptations of economic reductionism or technological determinism in favour of developing conceptu ally informed, empirically rich accounts ofwhat happens when something new (an object or a (NEW PARAGRAPH) technique) is added to an already full world. Thus attention is paid at once to the new spaces of transformation and circulation involving bio technology and also the questions of coexistence of existing and novel ways of life that such new spaces raise. nb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Bingham (2006); Parry (2004). (NEW PARAGRAPH)