Biotechnological industry, researchers, and governments have entered a new constellation, regime, and accelerated phase, called the Bioeconomy. This agenda - which exists in the form of policy, funding programs, white papers, etc. - reimagines how we live, how we live together with other kinds of life, and, directly, these other kinds of life at the molar and molecular level. In other words: All kinds of livelihoods in their social, economic, and ethical relations are put in motion. This agenda is, geopolitically, not restricted to Global North nor contained by any national or international jurisdiction and governance.

Argument

Biotechnological industry, researchers, and governments have entered a new constellation, regime, and accelerated phase, called the Bioeconomy.

This agenda - which exists in the form of policy, funding programs, white papers, etc. - reimagines how we live, how we live together with other kinds of life, and, directly, these other kinds of life at the molar and molecular level. In other words: All kinds of livelihoods in their social, economic, and ethical relations are put in motion. This agenda is, geopolitically, not restricted to Global North nor contained by any national or international jurisdiction and governance.

This conference aims to bring together a group of scholars, who can create a transdisciplinary conversation on the contemporary technoscience-economic agenda that is slowly becoming one of the most social and ecological transformations agendas on a global scale: this "Bioeconomy as Anthropocene 2.0", unlike climate change (which the most technoptimistic proponents of the Bioeconomy promise to mitigate or even solve), is begun to serve intentionally(!) as an intervention into ecosystems with the goal of changing how we live: From agriculture to biofuels, to medicine, to industrial production via microbial factories. The question how this transition is and even can be regulated;, e.g. through the creation of transnational law; is slowly but surely revealing itself to be one of the crucial socio-political issues of our time.

There is an interesting tension with the concept of bioeconomy, on the one hand the "players" of this discourse - who are in government, biotech research, and industry, as well as a small group of (over)specialized social researchers - are not only convinced that the "bioeconomy" (which ranges from agriculture, biofuels, urban [re]construction, medicine, biorefineries, -factories and -materials, climate change, etc.) is the future mode of economy and society in general, but they actively and powerfully influence this transition. On the other hand, the majority of people, even in closely related research areas have no idea what bioeconomy actually means.

To this means we need to find ways to recover the terms, gain both critical and aesthetic purchase, and become empowered and enabled to co-create "his "bioeconomy", in other words, find ways to democratize this development.

Programme

9:45am Welcome by the Organizers and the Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH

• 10:00am – 10:45am Introductory Talk: Molecular Mobilities  - The Macro-politics and Micro-poetics of Bioeconomy, Alexander I. Stingl, Collège d’études mondiales, FMSH, ISRF
• 10:45am – 11:30am On “more-than-human” geography, Clemens Driessen, Univeristy of Wageningen, Environmental Sciences
• 11:30am – 12:15pm On milk, bioeconomy and Australia, Yoriko Otomo, Research Associate, SOAS University of London
• 12:15pm – 1:00pm On the regulation of marine biodiversity from the UN, Natalia Frozel Barros, ATER chez Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Doctorante en Science politique, CRPS/CESSP

Break

• 1:45pm – 2:30pm On environmental justice, Fabìola Lessa Vianna, Political Scientist, Partnership Development Officer at French Institute for Building Efficiency (IFPEB)
• 2:30pm – 3:15pm On deforestation, Tamar Blickstein, Freie Universität Berlin CRC 1171 “Affective Societies”
• 3:15pm – 4:00pm On the ICC, the sociologist and the artist, Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi, FMSH
• 4:00pm – 4 :45pm On “glyphosate, a lovestory”, Birgit Müller, EHESS, Institut interdisciplinaire d’anthropologie du contemporain (IIAC) - Laboratoire d’Anthropologie des Institutions et des Organisations Sociales (LAIOS)
• 4:45pm – 5:30pm On alternative ways of valuing environment, Nathalie Blanc, Laboratoire Dynamiques Sociales et Recomposition des Espaces (Ladyss), Directrice de recherche CNRS, Geographie
• 5:30pm - 6pm Keynote - Building a research on “Regulating bioeconomy” ? : the case of blue economy and the rise of Transnational State, Gilles Lhuilier, ENS Rennes, Head of Global Legal Studies Network, FMSH