Descrizione del progetto
Come i valori della società si traducono in organismi bovini
La domanda globale di carne è in crescita e gli studi mostrano che il consumo di questo alimento potrebbe aumentare del 70 % entro il 2050. Ciò pone l’attenzione sulla produzione di animali d’allevamento con un’enfasi particolare sulla genomica animale, la selettocoltura e le risorse genetiche. Il progetto The BoS, finanziato dall’UE, analizzerà le tecnologie genomiche, prendendo in esame in particolare il modo in cui i valori della società vengono tradotti in organismi bovini. Il progetto risponderà alle seguenti domande: come vengono incorporati valori come la salute, l’ambiente o la biodiversità nella selezione e riproduzione del bestiame? Viceversa, in che modo gli organismi vengono trasformati da questi valori e attraverso quali tecniche e pratiche? I risultati forniranno un’antropologia politica dell’infrastruttura genomica contribuendo alla sociologia della conoscenza scientifica.
Obiettivo
Genomics technologies promise to shape the ideal animal of the future. Social sciences so far mostly took interest in the medical domain with the Human Genome Project and its aftermath. However, a great deal of fast-pace developments are occurring in livestock genomics. This has become a mundane genomics infrastructure, routinely used in late capitalist societies. This infrastructure offers to solve pressing societal issues, such as improving the health of animals, lowering their environmental impact or enhancing the biodiversity. Focusing on the case of cattle livestock, The BoS project aims to describe and analyze how societal values are being translated in bovine bodies. It asks the following guiding research questions: how are such values as health, environment or biodiversity incorporated in cattle selection and reproduction? Conversely, how are bodies transformed by these values, and through which techniques and practices?
To answer those questions, The BoS project will provide a political anthropology of the genomics infrastructure, contributing to sociology of scientific knowledge, science & technology studies and environmental humanities. Phase 1 carries out three laboratory ethnographies in centres of scientific excellence that contribute to global livestock genomics, so as to provide context-sensitive accounts of how values of health, the environment and biodiversity are turned into knowledge. Phase 2 follows the knowledge in the wider world of social actors, carrying out participant observations and semi-structured interviews, to question the transformation of cattle bodies by genomics. The project is very innovative as livestock genomics offers an unprecedented case study of actual applications of genomics knowledge. Three PhD students will be respectively in charge of one of the fieldworks (one centre / one value). A postdoc researcher will investigate the historical contexts for each fieldwork and provide conceptual insight to the PhDs students.
Campo scientifico
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
4000 Liege
Belgio