Learning about a fish from an ANT: actor network theory and science education in the postgenomic era

Abstract

This article uses actor network theory (ANT) to develop a more appropriate model of scientific literacy for students, teachers, and citizens in a society increasingly populated with biotechnological and bioscientific nonhumans. In so doing, I take the recent debate surrounding the first genetically engineered animal food product under review by the FDA, AquaBounty Technologies’ AquAdvantage® salmon, as a vehicle for exploring the ways in which the biosciences have fundamentally altered the boundary between nature and culture and thus the way the public understands both. In response to the new challenges of a postgenomic society, I outline three frameworks for using ANT literacies in classroom settings. Each frame, I argue, is foundational to the development of a scientific literacy that can trace and map actors involved in controversies such as the AquAdvantage® salmon. In examining these frames I follow the actor of a salmon through an environmental history lens, the technoscientific literacy operating in AquaBounty’s FDA application and the National Academies new science education framework, and finally to a model of democracy rooted in an ethic of the common. The ultimate claim of this article is that until science education (and education in general) can begin to include nonhumans such as the AquAdvantage® salmon as part of a common political framework, students, educators, and community members will continue to be at the mercy of experts and corporate stakeholders for defining the terms in which people heal, feed, and educate themselves now and in the future.