The co-production of biotechnology and democratization in community science labs

Biotechnological knowledge, materials and tools are becoming broadly available and accessible. As a result, biohacking–the conduct of scientific experiments and projects outside of mainstream scientific settings in academia and industry–has become increasingly possible. A global community biology movement aspiring to democratize biotechnology has emerged in the last few years, and community science labs have become particularly important local spaces for biohacking. Community science labs can be analysed as sites of embedded co-production. On the one hand, biotechnological knowledge and innovations are developed through individual and group projects. On the other hand, norms and cultures, invoked and enacted as democratization, also emerge. These co-productionist processes unfold through three sets of practices affecting who can be a scientific actor (participation), what resources they can use (accessibility), and how they can contribute to knowledge production and innovation (autonomy). Two community science labs (BioCurious and Counter Culture Labs), both located in the San Francisco Bay Area, illustrate this process. Both labs share common goals to co-produce more diverse communities and technoscientific projects that engage with biotechnology, with safety standards critical considerations. However, they uphold divergent broader political economic aspirations, leading to norms that are associated with more wide-ranging innovation pathways (BioCurious), or ones that are more narrowly restricted to open source (Counter Culture Labs). Comparisons with community science labs elsewhere, and connections to other forms of democratization, could build on these empirical and conceptual insights.