How the regimes governing biological research changed during the
genomics revolution, focusing on the Human Genome Project.
The rise of genomics engendered intense struggle over the control of
knowledge. In Reordering Life, Stephen Hilgartner examines the
"genomics revolution" and develops a novel approach to studying the
dynamics of change in knowledge and control. Hilgartner focuses on the
Human Genome Project (HGP)--the symbolic and scientific centerpiece of
the emerging field--showing how problems of governance arose in concert
with new knowledge and technology. Using a theoretical framework that
analyzes "knowledge control regimes," Hilgartner investigates change in
how control was secured, contested, allocated, resisted, justified, and
reshaped as biological knowledge was transformed. Beyond illuminating
genomics, Reordering Life sheds new light on broader issues about
secrecy and openness in science, data access and ownership, and the
politics of research communities.
Drawing on real-time interviews and observations made during the HGP,
Reordering Life describes the sociotechnical challenges and
contentious issues that the genomics community faced throughout the
project. Hilgartner analyzes how laboratories control access to data,
biomaterials, plans, preliminary results, and rumors; compares
conflicting visions of how to impose coordinating mechanisms; examines
the repeated destabilization and restabilization of the regimes
governing genome databases; and examines the fierce competition between
the publicly funded HGP and the private company Celera Genomics. The
result is at once a path-breaking study of a self-consciously
revolutionary science, and a provocative analysis of how knowledge and
control are reconfigured during transformative scientific change.
