Reanimating Bios: biomimetic science and Empire.

Abstract

This work explores changing frameworks for technological development that have transformed how scientists learn about and with `nonhuman' animals. Building on literature within geography, animal studies, and science and technology studies, the research explores how the growing field of "biomimetic" technological design transforms conceptions of life as it both reflects and influences broader social and political change. Analysis of biomimicry's large-scale social elements with a detailed ethnographic study of scientific practices within the laboratory examines the conceptions and uses of biological life--human and animal--that form the basis of biomimetic strategies of technological creation. The work outlines the implications of biomimicry in how we understand relationships between regimes of governance and the innovative practices that are constitutive of and constituted by them.