Canada's Biotechnology Strategy: Struggles on the Knowledge Commons Featuring: Wilhelm Peekhaus

From Michael Zimmer, PhD
Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Director, BS in Information Science & Technology Program
Associate, Center for Information Policy Research
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

w: www.michaelzimmer.org

The Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) in the School of Information Studies announces the following research presentation:

Canada's Biotechnology Strategy: Struggles on the Knowledge Commons

Featuring: Wilhelm Peekhaus, PhD (2010-2011 CIPR postdoc)

November 18th, 2010
Time: 12:15 -1:30
Location: Bolton Hall, Room 521

This talk reports on research that interrogated the various forms of social struggles that have emerged in defiance of the progressive enclosure of agricultural biotechnology within the social factory. An emphasis on the information and knowledge issues embodied in these conflicts, aside from potentially being indicative of the scope of the social factory, holds the promise of cementing an important bridge between Library and Information Studies (LIS), with its concern over information flows and the information cycle, and political economic and public policy disciplines. I contend that the multiple information issues that inhere in biotechnology, ranging from intellectual property concerns in respect of genetic information to the contested nature of regulatory and public biotech discourses, render LIS a wholly apposite discipline within which to situate a critical analysis of this technoscience that goes beyond the current LIS engagement with bioinformatics.

Additional details at: http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/news/events/cipr_peekhaus_111810.cfm