The Politics of Emergence: Public-Private Partnerships and the Conflictive Timescapes of Apomixis Technology Development

How are ‘conflicts in time’ in technoscientific practices effectively theorised from a social scientific perspective? What are the ramifications for critique of the complex relations between ‘public’ and ‘private’ sectors in the global bioeconomy? This article furnishes a case study drawn from frontier research in agricultural biotechnology development, as this field is confronted with the challenges of global food security and climate change. ‘Apomixis’, the capacity of certain plants to ‘self-clone’, would arguably comprise a revolutionary tool for agriculture. Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are a leading template for innovation, yet their hybrid character poses special challenges to stakeholders for the resource-poor. Through historical anthropological study of a PPP incorporating key players from the public sector and seed industry, I analyse the conflictive temporal politics of project planning and management, co-innovation, and frontier research; their impacts on technology development; and highlight implications for production of public goods. The article illustrates how such conflicts are illuminated by a temporal analysis informed by the anthropology of time, science and technology studies, and the philosophy of Deleuze. It presents a theoretical model for wider critique of how significant research and development trajectories go undeveloped or are impeded, which it terms ‘sideshadows’.