(De)naturalizing knowledge ecosystems: on the use of ecological metaphors in STS and innovation studies

Abstract

Ecological metaphors are ubiquitous but largely uncontested in discourses about the changing dynamics of knowledge production and circulation. Both formally and colloquially, scholars, policymakers, and entrepreneurs use the knowledge ‘ecosystem,’ and ‘ecology’ metaphors to describe science dynamics parallel to the way ecologists have understood the dynamics of natural systems. So far, STS has paid very little critical attention to the origins and implications of these metaphors. But, it is important to understand how using ecological metaphors frames technoscience culturally and politically. Four uses of the knowledge ecosystem and ecology metaphors emerge from disparate historical contexts and with different political-epistemic implications. As analytic principle, ecological metaphors pop up in early STS; around the same time, they circulate frequently as management tools for companies in knowledge management studies; a policy model in innovation studies expands the knowledge ecosystem to include epistemic interactions between companies, governments, and universities, akin to the materialization of technoscience at the science park; and as socio-political framework, knowledge ecologies challenge the hegemonic, globalized science system and present alternative, post-capitalist knowledge practices, grounded in experiences from the Global South. This genealogical multiplicity of ecological system metaphors problematizes their colloquial use in STI policy and scholarship. Thus, STS has to put its mouth where its money is: further naturalization of neoliberal science as the ecosystem is risky amidst accelerating socio-ecological crises. Besides contesting and refusing specific uses of ecological metaphors, the re-evaluation and renewal of knowledge ecologies should take both political-economic assumptions and ecological consequences seriously.

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