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In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC), modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging "bio-economy" in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for sustainable economic growth. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous "bio-concepts." Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their capitalization. This article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially the fetishism about any "bio"-item We offer an alternative view of the bio-economy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes.

"In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC), modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging 'bioe-conomy' in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for sustainable economic growth. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous 'bio-concepts'. Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their capitalization. This article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially the fetishism about any 'bio'-item We offer an alternative view of the bio-economy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes." (author's abstract)

The Lisbon Agenda was meant to make the European Union 'the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy (KBE) in the world' by 2010. As that date has now come and gone, it is apt to ask whether the Lisbon Agenda achieved its objective. We engage with this very question by analyzing new empirical material on the supposed transition to a KBE. Theoretically, we problematize the very notion that EU policies promoted the emergence of a KBE by highlighting how the Lisbon Agenda was tied to the financialization of the European economy. Our findings illustrate the abject failure of the EU's decade-long strategy to foster a new economy and better employment opportunities. We show that the main winners of the EU's economic strategy have been the finance sector and those who work in it. In summary, we argue that, despite the earlier assurances of Bell and Drucker, it is not the scientist or engineer but the banker who has been empowered to command a higher price in the new world of the KBE.

In the policy discourses of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and European Commission (EC), modern biotechnology and the life sciences are represented as an emerging "bioeconomy" in which the latent value underpinning biological materials and products offers the opportunity for sustainable economic growth. This articulation of modern biotechnology and economic development is an emerging scholarly field producing numerous "bio-concepts." Over the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to theorize this relationship between biotechnologies and their capitalization. This article highlights some of the underlying ambiguities in these conceptualizations, especially in the fetishization of everything "bio." We offer an alternative view of the bioeconomy by rethinking the theoretical importance of several key economic and financial processes.

There is a growing academic and policy interest in the Third Sector and its potential impact on regional development. A key aspect of the Third Sector is its role in regional development through the promotion of social capital. However, there is considerable debate around the definition of the Third Sector that limits our understanding of its impact. Here we first disentangle a number of ambiguities to clarify the distinctions between the concepts before secondly exploring the relationship between the regional development of social capital and the various aspects of the Third Sector. Finally we consider UK policy agendas and initiatives in light of the earlier discussion.

Neoliberalism is easily one of the most powerful concepts to emerge within the social sciences in the last two decades, and the number of scholars who write about this dynamic and unfolding process of socio-spatial transformation is astonishing. Even more surprising though is that there has, until now, not been an attempt to provide a wide-ranging volume that engages with the multiple registers in which neoliberalism has evolved. This book seeks to offer a wide-ranging overview of the phenomenon of neoliberalism by examining a number of ways that it has been theorized, promoted, critiqued, and put into practice in a variety of geographical locations and institutional frameworks.

In this guest introduction, we explore emerging critiques at the frontiers of techno-economic rentiership. Rentiership is a process entailing political-economic and technological (i.e. techno-economic) relations, formations, practices, and justifications underpinning the ownership and/or control of assets, which enable the capture of future revenue streams (i.e. what we call rents). Conceptually, in this context, rentiership permits us to analyse the increasingly diverse techno-economic dimensions of those future revenue streams, rather than being a normative term for identifying 'good' or 'bad' forms of revenue (i.e. profit vs. rent).

In this paper, we analyze the role of science and technology studies (STS) journal editors in organizing and maintaining the peer review economy. We specifically conceptualize peer review as a gift economy running on perpetually renewed experiences of mutual indebtedness among members of an intellectual community. While the peer review system is conventionally presented as self-regulating, we draw attention to its vulnerabilities and to the essential curating function of editors. Aside from inherent complexities, there are various shifts in the broader political–economic and sociotechnical organization of scholarly publishing that have recently made it more difficult for editors to organize robust cycles of gift exchange. This includes the increasing importance of journal metrics and associated changes in authorship practices; the growth and differentiation of the STS journal landscape; and changes in publishing funding models and the structure of the publishing market through which interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers are reconfigured. To maintain a functioning peer review economy in the face of numerous pressures, editors must balance contradictory imperatives: the need to triage intellectual production and rely on established cycles of gift exchange for efficiency, and the need to expand cycles of gift exchange to ensure the sustainability and diversity of the peer review economy.

In this paper, we analyze the role of science and technology studies (STS) journal editors in organizing and maintaining the peer review economy. We specifically conceptualize peer review as a gift economy running on perpetually renewed experiences of mutual indebtedness among members of an intellectual community. While the peer review system is conventionally presented as self-regulating, we draw attention to its vulnerabilities and to the essential curating function of editors. Aside from inherent complexities, there are various shifts in the broader political–economic and sociotechnical organization of scholarly publishing that have recently made it more difficult for editors to organize robust cycles of gift exchange. This includes the increasing importance of journal metrics and associated changes in authorship practices; the growth and differentiation of the STS journal landscape; and changes in publishing funding models and the structure of the publishing market through which interactions among authors, editors, and reviewers are reconfigured. To maintain a functioning peer review economy in the face of numerous pressures, editors must balance contradictory imperatives: the need to triage intellectual production and rely on established cycles of gift exchange for efficiency, and the need to expand cycles of gift exchange to ensure the sustainability and diversity of the peer review economy.