Performing synthetic worlds: Situating the bioeconomy

This paper explores the role of intermediary organisations in the development of the 'bioeconomy'. Focusing on the strategies employed by UK funding agencies to coordinate research in the emerging field of synthetic biology, I explore the spatiality of contemporary science and research policy and the practices engaged by research support bodies. While forms of territorial coordination have constituted a crucial strategy in the promotion of biotechnological clusters, regions and cities, a range of 'geographical imaginations' have dominated political and policy discourse on the bioeconomy and institutional responses to the emergence of synthetic biology. Developing a notion of the reflexive creation of hybrid forums, drawn from Callon et al. (2002), in this paper I develop an alternative concept of the performative enactment of interactive spatialities. I argue that in coordinating research in synthetic biology intermediary institutions are engaged in the active composition and management of new networks of actors and institutions.