Molecular Politics in a Global Economy

Launched during the heydays of the copying machine and the U.S. sunshine laws and surrounded by controversy from its inception, genetic engineering may be the best documented technology ever to emerge from a laboratory. This essay draws on the pages that flowed forth from formal policy arenas as well as from less accessible places to examine the rise and fall of genetic engineering controls in the United States and Britain. The general argument developed here is that the settling of the issues raised by this field was achieved not through the resolution of technical problems but rather through the exertion of social interests—notably those of national governments, transnational corporations, genetic engineering firms, scientists, and sectors of the public. A synthesis of methods of analysis drawn from critiques of pluralism and from Foucault's analysis of the relation between power and discursive practice is used to assess the relative effects of these interests.

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