Edgardo Lander
elanderl@yahoo.com
Universidad Central de Venezuela
Abstract:
The transformations that have occurred on the planet as a consequence of the reconcentration of power and the growing commercialization of all aspects of life during the past three decades, from the beginning of this neoliberal counterattack initiated during the governments of Reagan and Thatcher, have had a profound impact on the means and processes of knowledge production in contemporary societies. Science and University research have not escaped this advancement of commercial logic the progressively invades more and more environments of collective life. The fights around production, appropriation and regulation processes play a more central role each time when it comes to the tensions between the expansion of commercial logic to all settings of life, which characterizes neoliberal globalization, and the multiple forms of resistance and searches for alternatives to this global order. These global processes constitute the context in which the specific theme of this article is addressed: the implications of the growing tendency to commercialize science, particularly (but not only) the disciplines associated to biotechnology and biomedicine.
Keywords: academic capitalism, commercialized science, neoliberal science, life sciences
