title: Space, time and nature: exploring the public reception of biotechnology in New Zealand.
abstract: Nature is widely acknowledged to be a fluid, contested, material-semiotic construction, historically and spatially grounded. This is certainly the case for New Zealand, where a number of constructions of nature have been mobilized as a means to make judgements over the viability of particular biotechnologies that have entered into public debate. In this paper, we utilize Mikhail Bakhtin's space-time matrix, the chronotope, to explore a series of complementary nature-narratives that have been mobilized as a moral basis for making judgments over the acceptability of a series of exemplars of novel biotechnologies that were presented to participants in eleven national focus groups. We argue that it is the specific space-time manipulations that characterize these sometimes overlapping narrative constructions that are used to justify reactions to novel biotechnologies.
authors.forename: Fiona
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Coyle
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fairweather
mesh_terms: D001709:Biotechnology; D019368:Nature; D009520:New Zealand; D011639:Public Opinion; D013995:Time