Transgenic crops have been in commercial production for more than a decade now and have captured a significant share of global production in several major crops. Yet, these technologies remain a source of intense debate. While promoters of transgenic crops claim that they will feed a hungry world and reduce the environmental impacts of farming, critics claim the opposite -- that transgenics pose unanticipated health and environmental risks.
This project funded through the Biology and Society initiative shared by the Science, Technology, and Society Program and the Biology Directorate explains the ongoing conflicts over transgenic crops as literally rooted in the specific places where crops are developed, tested, and grown, and the practices that researchers, growers, regulators, and activists use to either promote or protest this technology. By focusing on this connection between practice and place, a complex set of interests are highlighted: researchers' goals for testing transgenics, growers' attempts to produce them for profit, corporate interests in creating new markets through transgenics, and activists' desire to restrict their use. Though agricultural places and practices may seem quite mundane, they actually form the basis for considerable economic, political, and symbolic capital. The connection between place, practice, and power provides a valuable window for analysis of the struggles over transgenic crops. This conceptual focus blends approaches in science and technology studies that emphasize either local culture and practices or institutional networks and power structures; the result is a theoretical approach capable of bridging several levels of analysis.
The research focuses on two case studies. The first involves an episode termed here, "the monarch butterfly controversy," where widespread public debate about the environmental safety of transgenic corn followed from reports that pollen from transgenic corn harmed the larvae of the monarch butterfly. The second case involves recurring and widespread instances of vandalism and destruction of field trials meant to test the efficacy of transgenic crops. These examples highlight the complex politics of place and practice that surround debates over transgenic crops. Data are collected through a multi-method qualitative approach, using interviews, participant observation, and content analysis of media content related to the debates over transgenic crops.
The project has broader relevance because transgenics are the subject of international trade disputes, social movement protest, and widespread debates over the appropriate balance of commercial interest, state regulatory authority, and environmental and human health. The key advantage of the approach used in this project is that it focuses on the actual research practices and places used to develop and test transgenic crops, and demonstrates how the "nuts-and-bolts" of agricultural research provide a social and material context for ongoing conflicts. Therefore, the findings are particularly useful to the policy makers, growers, and activists who must decide just if and how transgenic crops ought to be tested and used. The PI also teaches several courses at Colgate University, where the topic of this project is incorporated into course materials and student projects.
