Page 37 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

BRICOLAGE

agricultural and environmental fields, together with the business,
regulatory, and societal context for such applications. Biotechnology
also includes applied immunology, regenerative medicine, genetic
therapy and molecular engineering, including nanotechnology. This new
field is at the chemistry/biology interface, focusing on structures
between one nanometre (i.e., a billionth of a metre) and one hundred
nanometres in size, from which life-building structures ranging from
molecules to proteins are made – and may therefore be engineered.
Bio- and nanotechnology bring closer the possibility of ‘organic’
computers, self-built consumer goods and a result in a much fuzzier
line between human and machine.
Biotechnology has been hailed as a successor to the telecommu-
nications and computer revolutions, especially in terms of its potential
for return on the investment of ‘patient capital’ (unlike the boom and
bust economy of the dot.coms). By the year 2000, there were over a
1000 biotech firms in the USA alone, with a market capitalisation of
$353.5 billion, direct revenues of $22.3 billion, and employing over
150,000 people (see http://www.bio.org/er/).
The importance of biotechnology for the field of communication is
that it is an industry based on ‘code’ – notably the human genome.
This field has transformed the concept of ‘decoding’ from one
associated with linguistic (cultural) or social information to one based
in the physical and life sciences. Biotechnological developments in
relation to DNA diagnostics or genetic modification, for instance,
have implications for society and culture, as well as for science and
business. DNA testing has already had an impact on family lawbecause
paternity is nowno longer ‘hearsay’ (for the first time in human
history). This in turn will influence familial relations and structures.
Biotechnological developments in agriculture, and the ‘decoding’ of
the human genome, have radical implications for the relationship
between nature and culture, and where that line is thought to be
drawn.

BRICOLAGE

A term borrowed from the structural anthropologist Claude Le ´vi-
Strauss to describe a mode of cultural assemblage at an opposite pole to
engineering. Where engineering requires pre-planning, submission to
various laws of physics and the organisation of materials and resources
prior to the act of assembly, bricolage refers to the creation of objects
with materials to hand, re-using existing artefacts and incorporating

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