<p>For decades, government, industry, and the mainstream media have<br>extolled the virtues of biotechnology. Their dominant message -- that<br>biotechnology can improve everything from our health and diet to our<br>environment and economy -- is unmistakably celebratory. We hear about<br>biotechnology's power to reverse environmental degradation, help<br>medical researchers identify disease genes, and increase industrial<br>efficiency, output, and jobs. Government and industry rarely tell us<br>about its negative side effects. Not only are genetically engineered<br>crops still failing to deliver consistently higher yields, but there is<br>also mounting evidence that genetically engineered organisms come with<br>a host of safety and environmental risks.</p><br><br><p><i> </i></p><br><br>Focusing on agriculture, <i>Resistance Is Fertile</i> challenges the<br>dominant rhetoric surrounding biotechnology by offering a critical<br>analysis of the role of capital and the state in the development of<br>this technoscience. In particular, Wilhelm Peekhaus analyzes the major<br>issues around which opponents of agricultural biotechnology in Canada<br>are mobilizing resistance -- namely, the enclosure of the biological<br>commons and the knowledge commons, which together form the BioCommons.<br>What emerges is an empirically and theoretically informed analysis of<br>topics such as Canada's regulatory regime, the corporate control<br>of seeds, the intellectual property system, and attempts to construct<br>and control public discussions about agricultural<br>biotechnology. <p><b>Wilhelm Peekhaus</b> is an assistant professor at the<br>School of Information Studies at the University of<br>Wisconsin-Milwaukee.