Biotechnology regulation, genetic resources, and food security      Part of my research and writing in recent years has centered on biotechnology and its international regulation, transnational trade in genetic resources, biotechnology products, and intellectual property rights, biotechnology and biodiversity conservation, and the implications of genetic engineering for food security and ecologically sound agriculture.      During 1999 – 2001, I held a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Cruz. This gave me the opportunity to update my knowledge of genetics and become familiar with new biotechnologies. I organized a faculty-study study group and developed an undergraduate course on Social and Environmental Dimensions of Biotechnology. This work has built upon my background in biology and biogeography and my earlier graduate study at Princeton in the history of science with Thomas Kuhn.      In addition to courses on ecological economics, globalization, and development, I now teach a graduate seminar on biotechnology and have chaired the Yale Faculty Group on Genetically Engineered Plants. I use biotechnology controversies as one way to illustrate how knowledge about nature is inseparable from power relations, place-specific ecologies, and the cultural practices of science, medicine, and agriculture. Some of my articles analyze the epistemology of genetic engineering: how “gene talk”, intellectual-property discourse, and agendas for the privatization of science and the promotion of transgenic crops have been mutually constructed, and why laboratory-centered biotechnology has had difficulty in coping with the complex geographies of living organisms and farm and forest ecosystems.      Several of my publications explore the discursive practices of crop genetic engineering in relation to the multilateral regulation of technology and international conflicts over farm policy, food trade, and agro-food restructuring. Other work in progress considers the emerging concept of “food sovereignty” as a framework for policy intervention and for reconceptualizing environment and development goals.      Useful inputs into this work come from my 10 years’ experience with Oxfam, recent consulting for the UN Food and Agricultural Organization and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, and my continuing connections with scholars and NGOs active around agroecology, food and resource rights, and multilateral governance reform. I have raised funds to support graduate-student field work in sustainable agriculture and for an April 2004 international conference on Agroecology, Conservation, and New Social Movements for Food Sovereignty in the Americas.  back to top