Pharmaceutical prospects: biopharming and the geography of technological expectations

The paper explores the role of imagined geographies in the shaping of new technologies. I argue that the role of place in future-oriented visions of technoscience is a neglected topic in studies of the social shaping of technology. The paper proposes an approach that combines the sociology of expectations with the geography of science. It focuses on the interplay between envisaged and current geographies to highlight the recursive dynamics of place and imagination. To illustrate this approach, the paper discusses the example of biopharming, the production of biopharmaceuticals using genetically modified crops. I argue that expectations for biopharming bear the imprint of place, or rather of the places in which they are imagined, as well as those they imagine, and ultimately those they produce. I use this example to suggest how social studies of science and technology can usefully investigate the spaces, places and scales of technological development.