Reordering Life: Knowledge and Control in the Genomics Revolution (Inside Technology) explores how the governance regimes governing biological research evolved during the genomics revolution, with a particular focus on the Human Genome Project (HGP). Stephen Hilgartner delves into the intense struggles over knowledge control that emerged alongside new knowledge and technology. Utilizing a theoretical framework to analyze “knowledge control regimes,” Hilgartner investigates changes in how control was secured, contested, allocated, resisted, justified, and reshaped as biological knowledge transformed. The book goes beyond genomics to shed light on broader issues such as secrecy and openness in science, data access and ownership, and the politics of research communities.

Built upon real-time interviews and observations made during the HGP, this work describes the sociotechnical challenges and contentious issues faced by the genomics community throughout the project. Hilgartner examines how laboratories control access to data, biomaterials, plans, preliminary results, and rumors; compares conflicting visions of how to impose coordinating mechanisms; explores the repeated destabilization and restabilization of genome database governance regimes; and assesses the fierce competition between the publicly funded HGP and private company Celera Genomics. The result is a path-breaking study of a self-consciously revolutionary science, as well as a provocative analysis of knowledge and control reconfiguration during transformative scientific change.

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