The Grenomics Revolution and Development Studies: Science, Poverty and Politics

The genomics revolution in biology has enabled technologies with unprecedented potential: genetic engineering is changing the terrain of development studies. Societies have reacted with indifference or appreciation to genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, beginning with insulin; yet for food and agriculture, a globally contentious politics and unprecedented politcy delemmas have arisen. Transgenic organisms raise questions of property, ethics and safety unimaginable a generation ago: what can be owned and with what responsibility? Much turns on science: how one conceptualizes evidence, knowledge, un certainty and risk. Both opponents and proponents of frontier applications in biotechnology have a poverty story to tell, but with divergent implications. The balance in this global debate has perceptibly shifted; a new developmentalist consensus concludes that the world's poor may benefit from genetic engineering: the question is 'under what conditions'? This essay intoduces a collection of scholarly treatments that being with needs of the poor - for income, nutrition, evironmental integrity - and evaluate theory and evidence for contributions from transgenic crops; The new consensus asssumes much about biosafety, bioproperty and biopolitics that is contrary to ground realities - the actual capacity of firms and states to monitor and control biotechnology - but raises new questions at the frontiers of development studies.