1 Between an environmental problem and a resource conflict—biodiversity as an “area of conflict”

The concept of biodiversity differs from the older term biological diversity which was used for a long time. In its modern meaning it is a definition introduced not to resolve problems of scientific understanding—in a narrow sense—but rather political problems strongly connected with questions of environmental concern on the one hand and economic interests on the other. So we have to consider at least three levels of analysis: (1) the relationships between the different disciplines involved in biodiversity research, (2) the questions emerging from environmental concerns (i.e. questions regarding the relationships between conservation and use, the question of sustainable use), and (3) the way in which economic interests and economic values are involved. All three levels are strongly influenced by each other, but each alone also raised difficult scientific questions. Even on the first level, which is only briefly discussed here, some problems arise because the concept of biodiversity—which involves by definition the diversity of species, genetic diversity and the diversity of habitats and ecosystems—attempts to integrate many different biological disciplines which certain difficulties even at the level of the natural sciences (Hertler 1999). So the term diversity does not have the same meaning nor the same approach for scientific handling in all three dimensions concerning species, genes or ecosystems and habitats. Even on the species level it sometimes remains unclear in what way a connection can be made between the diversity of species and environmental issues, i.e. regarding the stability of ecosystems (Trepl 1999). Another important question is whether the species term itself is well established in biological sciences (Gutmann et al. 1998; Janich and Weingarten 1999).

This conceptual definition, which also underlies the convention on biodiversity (CBD) and is codified through this international framework, is based not only on very heterogeneous disciplines from the natural sciences and biosciences, but also on various socio-ecological conflict fronts. More clearly stated: depending on which of the three definition parts we lay emphasis, different objects and different environmental problems and socioeconomic conflict fronts result. Is it merely a concept elaborated to resolve the loss of species diversity? Or a concept to stop genetic erosion (which is not the same, because the second took place in very different processes as will be described below)? Is this concept useful to handle the economic value of genetic diversity? Or is it an instrument for the conservation of important ecosystems like the tropical rain forest? Some of these aims are mutually supportive, at least to some degree, but not quite identical like the preservation of species diversity and the conservation of species rich ecosystems—if you look only at the amount of species this connection can be helpful. But what about ecosystems or habitats with a small number of species: are there without ecological value? And some of them are in great tension with each other, especially environmental concerns and questions of economic utilisation, regardless of the many attempts to reconcile them. But the most important point for scientific investigations is to recognise that it is not at all the case that an objectively existing problem is only more or less well recognised. We have to look for the constitution of the problemitself, i.e. what exactly is the problem and why and for whom? And this constitution of the problem is the first reason why we have to analyse carefully the processes of the social construction of biodiversity.

A second point is closely connected, and that is, even if we should have in mind that social construction is always a double process—a process of symbolic construction and a process of practical or economic-technical construction, a distinction very important for the term social relationships with nature and therefore discussed in the section below—in scientific investigations we have to start with the symbolic or the discursive construction of biodiversity. This social construction is worked out in discursive struggles which are fought on the field of scientific descriptions but in which NGOs have played, and still do play, an important role (Görg and Brand 2003). In these struggles, thedominant perspective, at least within the framework of the CBD, is that the aim of protecting biodiversity can best be aspired to through commercial use (Martinez-Alier 1996; McAfee 1998). This dominant but by no means uncontroversial position has a decisive part in theeconomisation of biological diversity. The extension of the dominant conceptualisation from the traditional “protection of species” to “biodiversity” involves a restructuring of the subject which is as equally comprehensive and multifaceted as it is fraught with political consequences.

So the term biodiversity raises more questions than it is able to resolve. For this reason we should be sceptical of whether the introduction of this term is a result of scientific progress. In reverse, the term was introduced for political reasons. This process, which cannot be dealt with here in detail, shows that the concept of biodiversity is not at all due to an imminent advance in scientific knowledge. Rather, this concept and its career in international politics are clearly politically “over-determined”. While biological diversity was at first used as a synonym for diversity of species, at the beginning of the 1980s in the report to the US president “Global 2000” the connection between ecological aspects, geostrategical considerations and the economic value of biodiversity was established for the first time (Flitner 1999). The comprehensive political importance of this shift can however only be grasped if it is recognised that in the discourse on biodiversity it is not solely an environmental problem concerning the preservation of nature which is being articulated. At the same time a conflict over the distribution of the profits from the utilisation of economically, increasingly important biological resources is also being fought. Therefore, in the term biodiversity, questions of environmental concern and conflicts about the economisation of nature are inextricably connected. More importantly, the mix is the very reason for the scientific problems involved in the operationalisation of interdisciplinary research on biodiversity. To understand the social construction of biodiversity means to analyse the history and the different traces of this mixture. To understand this argument a short historical overview may be helpful.

Since the 1980s at least two international fields of conflict regarding negotiation processes can be identified, in each of which a specific mixture of these two aspects evolved. The first are the discussions on international protection of nature and species, which became increasingly popular against the background of the environmental movement in the 1970s and got a new direction in the debate on sustainable development in the 1980s. Out of this discourse the idea was born of developing a comprehensive framework convention in order to combine the already existing agreements on the protection of species (e.g. the better known Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species or CITES) which varied widely but at the same time remained partial (Arts 1998; Swanson 1999). The CBD which was in fact passed in Rio in 1992 differs significantly from this idea, however. The CBD, namely, lists (a) the protection, (b) the sustainable utilisation of biodiversity, and (c) the regulation of the profits emerging from this use as aims of equal importance. In addition, the question of technology transfer was one of the central controversial issues at its adoption. Taking into account this question was of decisive importance for southern countries because they were seeking access to modern technologies. But at the same time the USA did not sign the CBD, and has still not ratified it, because it insisted on the priority of the protection of intellectual property.

In this line of the negotiations the weight was thus first put on the environmental aspect, which in the course of time was overlapped by questions of the distribution of profits and of technology and intellectual property. In a second area, the trend went in the opposite direction, however. Again at the end of the 1970s the conflicts increased over the issue as to how genetic diversity should be used in agriculture and how the profits from the use of genetic resources are distributed or should be distributed. The international political forum responsible is the UNO Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The conflicts here were triggered by the fact that countries from the south (speakers from the governments of India and Mexico) no longer wanted to accept that their genetic resources were transferred to the north without compensatory payment and that they were forced to buy the resulting product, namely new and more productive varieties and breeds at a high price. These so-called “seed wars” led to the establishment of a special commission within the FAO (the Commission on Plant Genetic Resources, now the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, CGRFA) and the adoption of an international agreement called the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources which, in 2001, was re-negotiated as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. Although these negotiations were also triggered by environmental aspects, namely the “genetic erosion”, which had led to enormous losses of useful varieties and breeds (see p. 152 in Flitner 1995a; Fowler 1995), questions of the distribution of genetic resources and distribution the share of profits from their use (and thus the connected property and access rights) were in the foreground of the FAO discussion. Observers therefore diagnosed an “environmentalization” of the debate at the beginning of the 1990s due to the joining of these negotiation lines with the CBD (Buttel 1992), i.e. an overlapping of the distribution conflicts by the environmental problems and the connected risk of de-politicizing the issue.

But this fear was, at least, not substantiated. The above negotiation processes ultimately integrate both aspects—environmental and resource problems—but under another sign and thus in a different way. This refers to the handling of the contents of certain controversial issues, e.g. the relationship between different maintenance strategies or the importance of anthropocentric-critical positions in environmental ethics. What is important is that, depending on the perspective from which the problem is viewed, the ecological dimensions of the problem along with the economic and social dimensions appears completely different. Thus, it took quite some time until, within the context of “wild biodiversity” (i.e. for those parts of biodiversity which exist in regions which apparently belong to no-one, such as the tropical rain forest—an assumption called into question by a lot of ethnological research) (Hecht 1998), the opinion became established that “nature” should not be protected from humanity. Not only do humans live in these regions in a multitude of ways from the utilisation of biological diversity, but their exclusion from this utilisation (for example by the setting up of nature reserves) injures social rights and can, furthermore, not achieve the intended goal of the maintenance of biodiversity in the long run. The opinion has become established today that the economic value of biological diversity (which can be achieved, for example, by tourism) can represent not only an important source of funds for the protection of nature or bring general recognition for the protection of biodiversity, but can also be a source of income for the people who live in the areas concerned and represent a potential source of development. Such developments also show that nature in the form of the “diversity of life” (Wilson 1992) has become a scarce and therefore economically valuable good. It remains questionable, however, whether economy and ecology can really be so easily “reconciled”.

As far as agriculturally utilised biodiversity is concerned, the recognition of the economic value and the social implications of the use of genetic resources have long been acknowledged and became a central part of the debates. The ecological dimension here was influenced by economic and distributional policy considerations from the beginning. Firstly, the danger of a “gene erosion” must be seen against the background of the strategy for the industrialisation of agriculture as a result of the “Green Revolution” in the 1960s (Mooney 1981). Secondly, the appropriation of genetic resources has been one of the driving forces of the colonisation of large parts of the world ever since the beginning of the expansion of Europe in the early 16th century. Since the beginning of the 20th century the systematic collection of seeds was undertaken in the context of modern plant husbandry. Looked at structurally, this was a case of “primitive accumulation” in the seed sector: a separation of the producers (the farmers) from the ownership of their means of production (Kloppenburg 1988; Flitner 1995a). At first, large parts of the seed production remained in the hands of small and medium-sized enterprises, but with the transition to the new biotechnological methods a huge wave of concentrations and the monopolisation of these technologies in the hands of large, and increasingly of trans-national active firms took place.

The industrialisation of agriculture was thus accompanied by the commercialisation of seed, i.e. its transformation into a globally traded good which, separated from local exchange practices, has increasingly become more and more a means of the accumulation of capital. The erosion of the in situ existing genetic diversity (i.e. the ecological dimension) and the international conflicts since the 1980s must be seen against this background. The subject of these conflicts was the inequalities and dependencies in north-south relationships and questions concerning compensation for the preservation of biological diversity of useful plants. While “the north” (i.e. the seed firms and research institutions based there) had free access to the resources which originally stemmed largely from southern countries, the farmers of the south had to pay for the modern seeds. In these conflicts the south was not entirely unsuccessful, for the recognition of the rights of the local peasants (the so-called farmers’ rights FR) resulted from them. Their efforts towards the creation and preservation of the diversity of useful plants and (formally) also their rights to compensation for these efforts were recognised. After many years of very hard negotiations a new international treaty, the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, was established where these FR were acknowledged (even if subjected to national legislation and therefore with little practical evidence) (see Brand and Görg 2003). Together with rights embodied in the CBD these rights continue to be one of the levers with which a case can be made for the socio-economic aspects within the framework of these debates to ensure the interest of weaker players. Within the CBD, which does not include FR, indigenous groups and peoples are laying claim in a similar way to the recognition of their efforts regarding the careful use and the preservation of biodiversity. In Article 8(j) of the CBD this role is formally recognised. The issue is more difficult, however, when indigenous groups claim their rights to their form of “intellectual property” and make a common front together with farmers’ associations and NGOs against the biopiracy of the north (cf. GRAIN 1997; Ribeiro 2002).

Because of the overwhelming importance of rights in the use of biodiversity—from the rights of local people like rural farmers or indigenous peoples, to trans-national corporations (TNCs) and the sovereign rights of nation states—a third conflict field became more and more important in the late 1990s: the negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO) and their Treaty on Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Because this treaty is partial toward the rights of private companies from the north, strong resistance from governments and interest groups from the south, along with many NGOs from the north, were united against the structural dominance of the TRIPS-agreement in international politics. Here the economic aspect is much more in front of the discourses. Nevertheless it seems too simple to discuss only the tensions between the CBD—as an environmental agreement—and the TRIPS-agreement. Expectations regarding the economic value of biodiversity are incorporated in the CBD as well as in the International Seed Treaty of the FAO. These expectations give guidance to the direction of scientific research, too, because the economic value of biodiversity is seen as a good reason for different investigations even from disciplines not involved in economic-technical appropriation (as taxonomy and systematic) (see i.e. Steininger 1996). But the concrete mixture of environmental, economic and social aspects differs strongly within and between these agreements and the ongoing negotiation processes (for an investigation of the relationships between these different agreements and their role in the global regulation of biodiversity see Brand and Görg 2003).

2 Social construction and material properties

The social construction of biodiversity is a very complex global process in which different and highly contested discourses are involved. The term biodiversity is much more a loose bracket to integrate sometimes contradictory purposes than a definite object of scientific investigations. Some of these purposes, as mentioned above, include the connection between environmental concerns and geostrategical considerations, coupled with an increasing economic value of genetic resources and the strong relationships with economic values and food security of local rural people on one hand with the rights of TNCs on the other. The term biodiversity seems to be more a situative compromise bringing together some who are engaged in struggles over the reorientation of environmental policy. While some involved accepted the discourse over the economic value of biodiversity, at the same time, others criticised this discursive terrain and its constitutive assumptions, i.e. the hype about the economic value of biodiversity and about benefit sharing (GAIA/GRAIN 2000). Therefore the term ‘genetic resources’ sometimes seems more appropriate because it uncovers the distributional conflicts involved but veiled in the biodiversity discourse (Flitner 1995b). At the same time this term will lose or at least weaken the connection with ecological problems and environmental concern.

It should be stated that these processes of social construction does not imply that biodiversity can be constructed at pleasure, and that the material conditions of the appropriation do not matter. Conversely, the material properties are at the centre of the struggles—in environmental, economic and social respects. For the same reason social construction and material properties could not be separated completely. What we denote as material properties are involved in processes of social construction and therefore never given in a pure way. Conversely, we can discover material dimensions of social constructions in a reflection on the experiences accompanied with processes of practical construction (Görg 2003b); but even then no strong criterion exists to fix some properties as “hard facts”. Material properties are more incorporated in the insecurities of a given subject. With respect to environmental concerns, the insecurities emerge whether and to what degree a loss of biodiversity is occurring and what consequences are raised from this loss for human societies and different social purposes. Even if we accept that the environmental discourse tends to veil the social conflicts around the appropriation of genetic resources, to deny the importance of the environmental concerns make the assumption that there is no ecological importance to biodiversity at all. This assumption can be called a metaphysical assumption because it makes claims over the importance (or unimportance) of an ecological problem leaving behind all kinds of social knowledge and insecurity; that is, it makes the assumption that nothing like an environmental problem exists. But if we accept this problem (because we cannot deny its existence), natural or biological sciences are at least necessary to deal with it even if no discipline or special approach can ever be sure to fix the material properties completely. So insight into the social construction of biodiversity does not show privilege to social sciences, as sometimes claimed in the so called “science wars”, but refers back to biological disciplines (Scharping 2001).

Even in an economic respect, the material conditions matter. Until now it is unclear whether biodiversity is really necessary for biotechnological purposes. Whereas the combinatory chemistry declares that there is nothing special in biological resources and genetic diversity—and therefore technical options can substitute biological inputs—corporations engaged in the search for natural inputs believe the opposite, that experiments in science are not superior over nature: “Nature has been trying this experiment (to develop special properties) for two billion years.” (see a representative of Monsanto quoted in Macilwain 1998). Regardless of who is right in this debate, it depends on biological and technical expertise (and to some degree on the different perspectives of different disciplines). The answer is not contained in the material itself (and is not “natural” in this sense) but depends to some degree on social decisions guided by economic and other considerations including economic strategies, cost-benefit-analysis, cultural beliefs of the players involved, and, most basically, on economic success. But, nevertheless, it must still work, which means it cannot ignore material conditions of economic production. So here the same occurs as in the environmental respect: genetic resources are a social construction (Heins and Flitner 1998). But at the same time the material conditions of the construction still matter. This refers back to the biological and technical sciences of their application.

The same occurs in respect to social dimensions of biodiversity. The most important point here is the importance of agricultural diversity in situ, i.e. genetic or crop diversity “on farm”, for poverty alienation and food security. Whereas in the modernisation discourse, until the traditional farming systems of the1950s were mostly seen as an obstacle for development that had to be replaced through modern technologies, local knowledge and traditional methods advanced over the last decade towards a source of hope to correct the failure of externally driven development for both social and environmental reasons. But two problems remained leading back to natural and technical sciences, too. First the question arises of how to incorporate traditional knowledge systems in scientific investigations without neglecting its specific contribution. And secondly, this question of a translation between local and scientific knowledge emerges and is strongly connected with unequal power relations (Agrawal 1995; Pottier et al. 2003). Regarding the first question, the discussion is divided between the assumption of totally different knowledge systems unable to communicate—sometimes connected with a mystification of local or indigenous knowledge as being in total harmony with nature—and a mere rhetorical acknowledgement of local knowledge which continues to weaken the rights of local players. Therefore the second question is very important: Is the acknowledgement of local and traditional knowledge merely a rhetorical one or does it strengthen the rights of locals to shape their own relationships with nature and their handling of biodiversity in particular? But even if power relations are of central importance, material conditions are also involved in the discussions concerning the question: What are really ecologically sound technologies suited for local players? And this question not only needs scientific and technological expertise. More than this it leads to the second problem, the way power relations affect the translation process. Here the return of the modernisation discourse regarding the use of modern biotechnology for small farmers can be observed (TNU 2003), which gives rise to fears regarding a weakening of the interests and rights of local players. In this process, conflicts about the use and the risks of genetic engineering are at centre stage. But because the use of biotechnology is strongly connected with economic and social questions and overlapped by power relations—from a sociological and political point of view the introduction of new technologies is directed from considerations of the TNC to expand their market power (Görg and Brand 2001)—technological and biological questions could not be handled separately from socio-economic and political questions.

The social construction of biodiversity is by no means a process dealing only with discursive elements as sometimes claimed by a “radical constructivism” explicitly and by most social sciences implicitly (see the discussions on constructivism and naturalism in sociology in Brand 1998). Because the material properties of the constructed object still matter, so does the knowledge directed towards these material conditions. At the same time the social conditions (social interests, power relations, processes of domination, etc.) of the processes organising the social construction of biodiversity must be reflected at all times—by social sciences and natural sciences, too. Power relations especially are of central importance in these processes; and power is not only exercised in a discursive way but incorporated in the material conditions of existence, in the societal relationships with nature. So we need reorganisation both of natural and social sciences to understand that apparently natural objects—like biodiversity—are constructed and structured by social relationships; but at the same time that social (power) relations are shaped by material properties (where these power relations are inscribed). To understand these complex processes of the mediation of society and nature the term societal relationships with nature can be used.

3 Aspects of societal relationships with nature

The concept of relationships with nature, which stems from the Marxist tradition and is at the core of social theory and the historical diagnosis of the “dialectic of enlightenment” in the critical theory of Horkheimer and Adorno (1987), offers quite a different starting point to the analysis of biodiversity . According to that concept, neither can society be discussed independently of nature since the social process is constitutively mediated through nature, nor is there in independent nature outside the social process. The mutual mediation of nature and society is central, however, not only for the one side, namely society, but it also affects the side of nature. At the beginning of the 21st century, nature untouched by human activity virtually no longer exists. Marx and Engels were completely aware of this tendency to transform nature from the state in which it was found. But in spite of this transformation, the material-substantial conditions of human existence retain a meaning of their own (or the logic of its own). This meaning can be respected by human activity, or it can be ignored. But if it is ignored, there may be destructive results for society in the form of ecological risks. Following Adorno’s critical theory, this specific meaning of nature can be designated thenon-identity of nature(Görg 2003b). Most important in this context is that there is no privileged path to discover or to fix this non-identity. The only way to grasp it is to reflect on the experiences made in the social construction of nature. Footnote 1

The starting point for a critical theory of societal relationships with nature was provided by the processes of a practical, i.e. economic/technical, and a linguistic/discursive construction of nature and not by the supposedly unchangeable laws of nature to which humanity or society has to adapt. At the same time, the thesis of a complementarity of natural and social perspectives and the methodological assumption that there is a convergence of different descriptions (Becker and Jahn 2003) seems misleading. Although we have to avoid both a naturalisation and a culturalisation of the problem—that is, to reduce it to a natural given entity at the one side or to a mere cultural or discursive construct at the other—we have to start our analyses by the processes of social construction, i.e. as a kind of sociocentrism (Görg 1999). The idea of complementarity, thus, seems to be misleading because she blurred the difference between theepistemologyand thepractiseof scientific investigations. Seen from the first dimension we can speak from complementarity insofar as the methodology and the object of both biological and social sciences have to be included in an interdisciplinary research on biodiversity. But seen from the practise of this scientific investigation we must first acknowledge that this investigation itself is asocialpractise and must be analysed as a social practise standing in connection with other social processes (economic, environmental, power relations, etc.) from which it is at least potentially affected. So the methodological assumption of a complementarity of perspectives seems naïve against the real involvement of social interest and power relations. As seen before, even if the term biodiversity needs scientific expertise from both sides, from social and natural scientists, the reason for the rise of this concept is not merely a scientific process but a politically over-determined process, and only in this process do the contributions of both scientific perspectives get their meaning. Insofar as there is no real complementarity between both perspectives even if a reflection of the social construction of their object could be Footnote 2a part of the natural sciences itself.

Today, scientific constructions, closely linked to the technical and economic strategies of their application, have come into the foreground in the reconstruction of the biodiversity discourses. It should be remembered, however, that there are also other practical constructions of nature, as we have touched on in the social dimensions of biodiversity and their cultural impacts (farmers rights, traditional knowledge, etc.). So, on one hand, there exists an unavoidable pluralism of societal relationships with nature, but on the other, the construction of nature is characterised by relationships of dominance particularly under bourgeois-capitalist conditions. Here the tendency to an increasingly commodification or valorisation of nature is embodied. Thus, even in the age of globalization, cultural interpretations and, linked to them, forms of knowledge and practices can be found which cultivate a completely different treatment of nature. These forms of knowledge and their agencies have even been given a greater value by the ecological crisis. In certain practices dealing with the tropical rain forest or in certain forms of agricultural production we can discover elements of a more respectful handling of natural resources. This poses the question of whether these practices today are only marginalised or if they have a chance of influencing the shaping of global relationships with nature. Are they an important element of the global regulation of biodiversity or not? And if not: Are they capable only of preserving their own relationships with nature? After all, the dynamics in this process are determined by players with quite different strategies (see for a broader investigation Brand and Görg 2003). As we have just seen, the dominant strategies for the appropriation of nature are increasingly aiming toward its commercialisation, i.e. towards a purely economic appraisal of nature. Here, the tendency towards the mastery of nature is continuing in a new and even stronger form.

According to the diagnosis of Horkheimer and Adorno (1987) in the “dialectic of enlightenment”, the process of history in occident is directed towards an ever more comprehensive mastery of nature. This means more than only the need for societies to appropriate material or energetic elements in the metabolism with nature. Mastery of nature aims at the full subordination of nature under social purposes without leaving any rest to non-identical elements (see p. 26 in Görg 2003a). The mastery of nature is not defined as every form of the appropriation of nature without differentiation (for then the development of society without the mastery of nature would be inconceivable) but one which completely subjects nature to its own objectives and ignores every non-identity of nature itself. This seems to be the case in the tendencies towards the commercialisation of biological diversity, because nature is reduced to its commercial value and elements which are not compatible with this seem to be ignored. But this does not lead to real and full control over the material properties. Conversely, non-identical properties have a logic of their own (even we are not fully aware of it), and this logic, if ignored, leads to unintended consequences in the form of ecological risks. So the process of modernisation is based on the growth of the mastery of nature, but this domination does not reach more control; rather, it rebounds in the destruction of nature and in ever greater dependence on the results and secondary effects of the mastery of nature.

Thus, society basically cannot free itself of its dependencies in relation to nature because the social process always contains material-substantial elements and this process is therefore dependent on a metabolism with nature. This is even more true after the experience of the ecological crisis. The ecological crises opens the public discourse for the experience that the process of modernisation, even in societies which believe themselves to be the most modern ones, did not free societies from nature but leads back to a new dependency in the form of ecological risks. The consequence of this crises was not an end to the mastery of nature but a “second form of modernisation” (Beck 1995), which is not really aware of the non-identical elements of nature. It is now clear that the mastery of nature has terminated in a “dominion of secondary effects” (U. Beck, 1995, my translation). Societies are confronted more and more with the consequences of the unhindered mastery of nature, and that causes additional costs and a great deal of trouble. The idea of a complete control of nature has therefore largely been abandoned and the scarcely controllable risks involved in the appropriation of nature are taken into account. The utilisation of nature is therefore increasingly accompanied by attempts to mitigate its destructive effects prophylactically or to eliminate them reactively, or more precisely stated, to engage in the protection of nature and the environment. But the question is whether this goes beyond the attempt of an accompanying cushioning of the mastery of nature because of the uncontrollable consequences or, in other words, whether we are dealing with areflexive form of the mastery of nature. This question can be empirically tested in the fate of strategies which follow a different, less destructive form of the appropriation of nature, a handling of nature which attempts to take account of its non-identity. And this test does not give too much reason for hope (Brand and Görg 2003).

In conclusion, interdisciplinary research on biodiversity intends neither to subordinate the term towards a critique of ideology or a discourse analysis to reveal its social or economic content, nor is it directed towards a more conservationist approach to set a counterweight against the commercialisation strategies. Biodiversity research has to start by thereal social conflictsand with regard to the players involved, that is, with a transdisciplinary focus (Ulmer et al. 2002). But for this transdisciplinary approach it seems not absolutely necessary to dissolve the differences of social and biological sciences nor to suppose a complementarity of natural and social perspectives. But it does seem necessary to cross disciplinary boundaries in respect to the problem involved. This leads to different challenges for social and natural sciences: whereas natural sciences must reflect critically on the social conditions of their own practices and the way these social conditions affect their own work, social sciences must reflect critically on the material properties of the objects involved. But both demands have to lead in the same direction: to understand the shaping of societal relationships with nature that are actually occurring in global societies, and also to react critically towards the tendencies of a reflexive form of the mastery of nature. For these conservation and utilisation strategies, or economic and ecological dimensions, should not be handled separately because they are indissolubly intertwined. It is basically always a question of the different forms of the socialisation of nature, of different cultures and practices in the handling of biodiversity and the consequences for nature (and their non-identical properties). In this constellation the tendency toward a greater commercialisation dominates the direction of the regulation of the relationships with nature. In this process, other forms of organisation are marginalised and tend to be dissolved, and nature is reduced to its economic value, i.e. subsumed under the practices of marketing. In the strategies of the reflexive mastery of nature, in addition, even attempts to maintain biodiversity are functionalised for strategies of valorisation. The question, however, is not utilisation versus protection, but rather, with which strategies of utilisation can the maintenance of biological diversity also be aimed? For this, the starting point to be taken must be the specific historical conditions in which these strategies clash with one another (including the question of the actors involved). With regard to the object of the conflicts, biodiversity it is not only a question of quite new forms of their scientific description, but of a new constitution of the object itself and of new processes of its practical appropriation. Even the political structures and terrains are in a state of upheaval. The valorisation of genetic resources is an integral part of a new phase of capitalist development and of what we callpost-Fordist relationships with nature (Brand and Görg 2003). Only if the novelty of this phase and its central elements are adequately taken into account, can the conflicts over the organisation of relationships with nature be grasped adequately. And only then the chances of alternatives in the organisation of relationships with nature can be estimated.