This paper examines how the application of advances in molecular biology change the relationships between nature and capital through a case study of Hawaiˋi's seed corn industry. Hawaiˋi's relatively minor role as a winter nursery changed in the late 1990s after the seed corn industry was reshaped by a series of techno-scientific innovations and organizational restructuring. We draw attention to a molecular breeding technique called marker-assisted selection (MAS) that accelerates crop improvement cycles by making parent lines selection more efficient and by taking advantage of extra growing seasons in tropical locations such as Hawaiˋi. Additionally, we argue that a wider application of MAS enhances seed firms' geographical flexibility, allowing them to capitalize on the institutional rents of Hawaiˋi's agrarian politics and overcome challenges that might emerge in the future.
During the pandemic, many prominent global leaders and scholars have called for placing science above politics. This commentary argues that such rhetoric dangerously oversimplifies science and politics as insular from democracy and geographical context. The theory of co‐construction from science and technology studies reveals the pandemic’s geographic intersection with other threats to democracy, such as rising inequality and authoritarianism. Since COVID‐19 figures to be central to the politics of the future, the field of geography helps to contextualise the importance of problematic trends that hinder the capacity for democracies to respond to present and future crises.
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