Transformation and slippage in co-production ambitions for global technology development: the case of gene drive

Abstract

Co-production is an increasingly popular framework for knowledge generation, evaluation and decision making. Despite its potential to open up decisions and practices to the input of others, co-production regularly falls short of its transformative ambitions. Through documentary analysis, we investigate the meaning and dynamics of co-production as it stretches beyond the local into global research and technology spaces. We find that in the case of global gene drive, the meaning of co-production is extended in novel ways and underpinned by new possibilities for meaningful transformation. At the same time, we also identify a simultaneous resurfacing of reductive framings of collaboration. In the paper we present ‘slippage’ as a useful heuristic in helping to understand why co-production fails. We argue that if co-production in these new spaces is to achieve its transformative ambitions, there is a need to engage with new and entrenched knowledge hierarchies that contribute to this slippage.