Abstract

Ontological controversies represent a central issue for assessing the sustainability of technoscientific innovation and the policies that rely on them to address specific socio ecological criticalities. Moving from this hypothesis, this article inquiries the relevance of an ontological politics perspective to understand conflicts and controversies in innovation policies that affect the relationship between society and the environment, such as those related to the bioeconomy paradigm. The article analyses a case study of an opposition movement that arose in Burkina Faso in response to the experiments conducted by the Target Malaria project and focused on the use of an emerging genetic technology, namely engineered gene drives. It shows how the social tensions and conflicts generated around this technology can best be understood in terms of divergent positions on the ontological nature of society-environment relations and the ways in which alternative realities are created or rendered impracticable by technoscientific innovation and their application. This includes and broadens the question of the inclusion of different visions, interests and perceptions of risk in the politics of innovation and requires that both the epistemic and ontological character of innovation processes be addressed responsibly. Additionally, the article elucidates how, in the context of neoliberal bioeconomy, «philanthrocapitalist» programmes that assume certain views of reality and of the human welfare are in fact ontological politics with far reaching implications