The case of agricultural biotechnology illustrates how a technological choice reifies its own problem definition. The inherent socio-agronomic problems of intensive monoculture are reified as genetic defects, which therefore must be corrected at the molecular level. Biotechnology structures a dependency which is reified as a social relation between things-such as between crop genetics and plant pests. In these ways, socio-political choices take the form of ''discoveries'', e.g. external threats and/or molecular-level opportunities found in nature. Within its self-perpetuating logic, any limit or failure must be remedied by more of the same solutions, e.g. through a genetic-pesticide treadmill. In response to public controversy, the state has devised various participatory exercises, which have a double-edged role. They provide a wider audience for public debate, while setting the terms for expert regulatory procedures, generally within a neoliberal ''risk-benefit'' framework. Safety regulation reifies biotechnological risk as an attribute of novel genetic characteristics, conceptually delinked from the practices which they facilitate. Environmental harm is defined in biotechnological terms, e.g. by emphasizing potential costs to intensive monoculture. Such procedures may be said to biotechnologize democracy. To democratize technology, then, would mean to challenge the prevalent forms of both ''technology'' and ''democracy''.