Hawaiʻi as a Laboratory Paradise: Divergent Sociotechnical Island Imaginaries

Scientific discoveries or testing technical systems are often tied to places deemed central for such endeavours. Related technoscientific visions are not merely mapped onto a place like a blueprint, but co-constituted with pre-existing spatial imaginations. This is particularly so in the case of islands. Taking up Hawai‘i’s significance both for natural science and contemporary agricultural biotechnology, and expanding upon the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, Citation2015), spatial imaginations of islands – as remote, contained spaces – channel, and are channeled by technoscientific, colonial visions and theories. In this context, laboratory and paradise tropes either accommodate or ‘keep out’ science and technology, and find expression in two sociotechnical island imaginaries. In an ecological island imaginary, western-scientific conceptions frame Hawai‘i as a laboratory of nature, and hosting paradise for natural sciences. Anti-GMO activists likewise articulate an ecological island imaginary, yet one of Hawai‘i as laboratory on nature, and nonabsorbable paradise in such slogans as ‘Stop Poisoning Paradise.’ In an agribusiness island imaginary, policy and industry visions portray the Islands as conducive agricultural laboratory where Edenic settings point to a hosting paradise to accommodate advancements of science, technology and business. Laboratory and paradise tropes indicate shared epistemic commitments across diverse sociotechnical island imaginaries, as well as divergences, such as in efforts to decolonize science. An analysis of overlapping and contrary sociotechnical island imaginaries that attends to such key visions allows for delineating heterogeneous dynamics beyond conventional categories like biodiversity, science, or culture.     «

Scientific discoveries or testing technical systems are often tied to places deemed central for such endeavours. Related technoscientific visions are not merely mapped onto a place like a blueprint, but co-constituted with pre-existing spatial imaginations. This is particularly so in the case of islands. Taking up Hawai‘i’s significance both for natural science and contemporary agricultural biotechnology, and expanding upon the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim, Citation201...     »