Contested Imaginaries of Biotechnology Governance in Guatemala

This article analyzes the contested sociotechnical imaginaries of biotechnology governance in Guatemala. Sociotechnical imaginaries are collectively imagined forms of social life reflected in the design and fulfillment of scientific and technological projects. Although often used to explain how one dominant protechnology imaginary became solidified within national cultures, sociotechnical imaginaries can be multiple and competing. I use the concept of contested sociotechnical imaginaries to examine the struggle among campesino and Indigenous activists, scientists, environmentalists, and state agencies over two biotechnology imaginaries. These imaginaries are biotechnology for development and retrospecting dispossession. These imaginaries play a key role in contentions over a proposed national seed inventory. I argue that the unequal power of these imaginaries helps explain increasing accommodation to biotechnology and the demobilization of powerful, heterogeneous coalitions opposed to genetically modified organisms.