Hénaff, Elizabeth M. “Vernacular Biotechnologies.” Research Directions: Biotechnology Design 1 (2023)
e5. https://doi.org/10.1017/btd.2022.5.
“Biotechnology” is defined by the reputed journal Nature Biotech as “[the] technology/methodology of relevance to the biological, biomedical, agricultural and environmental sciences”. Most often, what are defined as biotechnologies are based on the utilisation of cellular or molecular mechanisms for industrial applications, i.e., specific to the recent developments of Western science and livelihoods defined in the capitalist context. However, societies have been using their understanding of biological organisms and systems (biotechnology) to meet various hierarchies of needs (livelihoods) long before western scientists have shaped the understanding of molecular mechanisms. This question invites a wide range of research contributions in which we identify, evaluate and speculate on “what are we missing” in the (western) mainstream definition of biotechnology and design? We invite contributions in “vernacular biotechnologies” that challenge the paradigm that biotechnology and design is a modern discipline practiced by engineers in a laboratory. Vernacular biotechnologies can be common objects that are designed to interface with a living component of everyday life or the environment, and can include work shaped by traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and/or performed by persons who do not identify as engineers, and/or taking place in non-lab locations such as the kitchen or the field. We also invite critiques of colonial practices in biotechnologies such as biomining or synthetic biology, and their applications.