ABSTRACT
The Barcoding of Life Initiative (BOLI) has needed to promote the idea that barcoding works unambiguously in the domain of 'basic'/'non-commercial' taxonomic research in order to facilitate smooth access to biological and genetic materials needed to fulfil the barcoding vision and fill the BOLI database. The Consortium for the Barcoding of Life is the face-to-face technopreneurial broker that extends the barcoding frontier across the globe. The chapter looks at the global context in which barcoding is being played out – the global bio-knowledge economy and the biotechnology and genomic sciences as part of that global economy. It explores BOLI's production of taxonomic/biological universals within that context. The chapter highlights the way in which BOLI underplays the complexity of genomic biology as simultaneously material and informational. BOLI's business plan needs to promote biological and social universals if it is to be successful in its aims to break through geographical and cultural frontiers and barcode and hence protect a global nature.
