Genetic Resources and Socio-economic Evolution

US President Thomas Jefferson once said that the greatest service that could be rendered to any country was to add a useful plant to its culture. This statement underscores the importance of genetic resources in socioeconomic and cultural evolution. Economic history has often focused on technological development and ignored the role of genetic material in economic change. This chapter presents a brief overview of the role of genetic resources in socio-economic change and prepares the ground for subsequent analyses of historic botany. The Jeffersonian view of the world was based on a detailed understanding of the prevailing development in the US at the time. The lessons, however, have not been adequately learnt by most African countries.

This chapter will show that the introduction of new genetic material and the related technological knowledge into the economic system is one of the most crucial sources of economic growth. To illustrate this point, however, requires an alternative epistemological basis for social analysis. Most conventional approaches are based on static notions that are inherently incapable of dealing with socio-economic systems which evolve under conditions of uncertainty. A non-equilibrium systems approach captures the destabilizing effects of new genetic material and the related technology on the socio-economic system.

Epistemology and environmental expansionism

The rise of inanimate technology and the increased use of genetic resources are closely linked. The shift from hunting and gathering to agriculture required changes in the knowledge base and the introduction of new technologies. Technology enabled mankind to introduce new modes of interacting with the environment in order to meet nutritional needs. Thus, knowledge and the prevailing material conditions were closely tied together in a non-deterministic manner. The material conditions enabled mankind to formulate a range of institutional arrangements (including traditions, myths, rituals and codes of social behaviour) which embodied some of the rules that governed mankind's interaction with the natural environment. Some of these institutional arrangements, however, acquired autonomy and became a source of instrumental power in themselves.

Knowledge of the botanical and zoological base increased the range of options available for providing nutritional needs. At this early stage of socio-cultural evolution, mankind was already showing the tendency to expand and influence the natural resource base. The decision on whether to seek control over the natural environment differed from region to region. While the American Indians, for example, adopted an ecological cosmology that avoided the need to drastically transform and control the environment, Western thought is associated with various forms of expansionism and control. One of the earliest forms of expansionism was the application of genetic resources to expand economic activities and control other human beings, a narrower domain of social behaviour that can be referred to as genetic imperialism.

Modern historians have mainly presented a truncated understanding of expansionism, often emphasizing the recent events associated with the political and economic expansion of Western Europe and the creation of colonies. Much of this has been based largely on the materialistic interpretation of the world. In order to understand the historical role played by genetic resources in social change and economic expansion, it is necessary to examine the broader philosophical basis for expanionism in a non-deterministic manner. It is understood here as the view that the role of mankind is to extend control over the rest of nature. This view is well articulated by Aristotle who conceived of a divine hierarchy over which a supreme being, God, presided and the rest of the creatures followed in a descending pecking order. Humankind, more specifically man, ruled over all the creatures below him — women, children, koala bears, snails, phytoplankton and rocks.

Aristotle flourished during the era of Alexander the Great, a significant period in Hellenic imperialism. That his philosophy should reflect such thinking is not surprising. Aristotle may have influenced his pupil, Alexander, but the extent of that influence is uncertain. Aristotelian scholasticism carried all the major elements of expansionism. He argued that the conquest of 'natural slaves' was right and therefore war against barbarians was justified. His thoughts later became central doctrines of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in which the natural environment existed mainly for the purposes of meeting human needs. Christianity became inherently expansionist in practice and philosophy.

The view that humankind was supreme to all other life forms was strongly advocated by the Catholic Church. When some residents of Rome planned to organize a society to protest against the slaughter of bulls for amusement and sport, Pope Pius IX refused them permission on the grounds that animals had no souls and therefore did not deserve man's moral sympathies. Although St Francis of Assisi provides a counterpoint to the mainstream Catholic worldview, the church still remains antagonistic or indifferent to nature. With this kind of belief, all expansionists needed to do was to be convinced that other races were inferior and they could therefore justify their exploitation and even extermination.

The philosophical strand of Judaeo-Christian thought was consolidated by other notions that led to the mechanistic world in which genetic expansionism flourishes. One of the earliest advocates of expansionism was Francis Bacon. He saw the rise of science as a major source of power and tools for the control of nature. Bacon stressed that for all their pompous claims, the Greeks has not performed any experiments which led to improvements in the human condition. For him, the main goal of science was to endow human life with new discoveries and powers. He advocated the search for objective knowledge which would enable mankind to have control over all natural things.

The Baconian appeal to rationality and expansionism was furthered by René Descartes who sought to reduce all phenomena to mathematical expressions. The Cartesian world was precise and followed neat mathematical laws. With Baconian rationality one was able to identify the mathematical laws that governed the behaviour of all phenomena. The Greek view of the world as a series of chaotic events and decay was deemed irrational by Descartes and therefore dismissed as false. With the Cartesian method, the world could be reduced to separate entities which represented the whole; the behaviour of the sum of the parts was equal to the functioning of the whole. This...