In this project, graduate student researcher Tiffany Rinne, will study public acceptance or rejection of genetically modified (GM) foods in the United States and New Zealand. Rinne draws from current debates and approaches in ecological, medical, and cognitive anthropology to consider how lay understandings of biotechnological advances underlie and shape their broader public acceptance or rejection. Rinne specifically addresses why GM food technology is embraced in some industrialized nations (such as the United States) while it provokes serious concern and even aversion in others (such as New Zealand). This project will use empirically grounded cognitive approaches, in field research in both sites, to look directly at the cultural meanings afforded this one form of biotechnology, and how these meanings relate to very different national responses. It is postulated that differences in reaction to GM crop technology can be correlated to differences in the lay cultural meanings afforded health and the environment (mental constructs) as well as to differences in media coverage (social constructs). Anthropologists, through projects such as this, can play a pivotal role in understanding technological acceptance, an increasingly important endeavor given the mass production and global distribution of new technologies. Previous studies on GM food technology have taken the respondents out of social context and have not emphasized the culturally mediated nature of GM technology acceptance. By gaining a fuller understanding of the cultural elements influencing the GM debate, a greater understanding of the roots of international conflict over biotechnology will be garnered which may in turn influence international GM policies.
