'Mining money': science, legal technologies & working the borderlands of global finance

This paper explores the roles of science and market devices in the commodification of ‘nature’ and the configuration of flows of speculative capital. It focuses on mineral prospecting and the market for shares in ‘junior’ mining companies. In recent years these companies have expanded the reach of their exploration activities overseas, taking advantage of innovations in exploration methodologies and the liberalisation of fiscal and property regimes in ‘emerging’ mineral rich developing countries. Recent literature has explored how the reconfiguration of notions of ‘risk’ has structured the uneven distribution of rents. It is increasingly evident that neoliberal framing of environmental, political, social and economic risks has set in motion overflows that multinational mining capital had not bargained for (e.g. nationalisation, violence and political resistance). However, the role of ‘geological risk’ in animating flows of mining finance is often assumed as a ‘technical’ given. Yet geological knowledge claims, translated locally, designed to travel globally, assemble heterogeneous elements within distanciated regimes of metrology, valuation and commodity production. This paper explores how knowledge of nature is enrolled within systems of property relations, focusing on the genealogy of the knowledge practices that animate contemporary circuits of speculative mining finance. It argues that the financing of mineral prospecting mobilises pragmatic and situated forms of knowledge rather than actuarially driven calculations that promise predictability. A Canadian public enquiry struck in the wake of scandal associated with Bre-X’s prospecting activities in Indonesia is used to glean insights into the ways in which the construction of a system of public warrant to underpin financial speculation is predicated upon particular subjectivities and the outworking of everyday practices and struggles over ‘value’. Reflection on practical investments in processes of standardisation, rituals of verification and systems of accreditation reveal much about how the materiality of things shape the ways in which regional and global financial circuits are integrated, selectively transforming existing social relations and forms of knowledge production.

Regulatory or Regulating Publics? The European Union’s Regulation of Emerging Health Technologies and Citizen Participation

‘Citizen participation’ includes various participatory techniques and is frequently viewed as an unproblematic and important social good when used as part of the regulation of the innovation and implementation of science and technology. This is perhaps especially evident in debates around ‘anticipatory governance’ or ‘upstream engagement’. Here, we interrogate this thesis using the example of the European Union’s regulation of emerging health technologies (such as nanotechnology). In this case, citizen participation in regulatory debate is concerned with innovative objects for medical application that are considered to be emergent or not yet concrete. Through synthesising insights from law, regulatory studies, critical theory, and science and technology studies (STS), we seek to cast new light on the promises, paradoxes and pitfalls of citizen participation as a tool or technology of regulation in itself. As such we aim to generate a new vantage point from which to view the values and sociotechnical imaginaries that are both ‘designed-in’ and ‘designed-out’ of citizen participation. In so doing, we show not only how publics (do not) regulate technologies, but also how citizens themselves are regulated through the techniques of participation. © The Author [2012].

‘The Defining Features of the European Union’s Approach to Regulating New Health Technologies’

The brief for this chapter is to determine the defining features of the relationships between European Union law and new health technologies, by reference to risk, ethics, rights, and markets.

European Law and New Health Technologies: The Research Agenda

Maps the research agenda that underpinned the edited collection 'European Law and New Health Technologies', that this pieces introduces.

European Law and New Health Technologies ESRC End of Award Report, RES-451-26-0764

End of award report for the funded research seminar series of the same name.

European Law and New Health Technologies

Health is a matter of fundamental importance in European societies, both as a human right in itself, and as a factor in a productive workforce and therefore a healthy economy. New health technologies promise improved quality of life for patients suffering from a range of diseases, and the potential for the prevention of incidence of disease in the future. At the same time, new health technologies pose significant challenges for governments, particularly in relation to ensuring the technologies are safe, effective, and provide appropriate value for (public) money.

To guard against the possible dangers arising from new health technologies, and to maximize the benefits, all European governments regulate their development, marketing, and public financing. In addition, several international institutions operating at European level, in particular the European Union, the Council of Europe, and the European Patent Office, have become involved in the regulation of new health technologies. They have done so both through traditional 'command and control' legal measures, and through other regulatory mechanisms, including guidelines, soft law, 'steering' through redistribution of resources, and private or quasi-private regulation.

This collection analyses European law and its relationships with new health technologies. It uses interdisciplinary insights, particularly from law but also drawing on regulation theory, and science and technology studies, to shed new light on some of the key defining features of the relationships and especially the roles of risk, rights, ethics, and markets. The collection explores the way in which European law's engagement with new health technologies is to be legitimized, and discusses the implications for biological or biomedical citizenship.

‘Symposium: New Technologies, European Law and Citizens’

This special issue seeks to draw attention to the relations between new technologies and European law (encompassing EU law and the law of the Council of Europe and its institutions), and some of the implications for citizens.

Review: T. Murphy, New Technologies and Human Rights (OUP, 2009)

Extended review.