Science, Politics, and the Framing of Modern Agricultural Technologies - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 50

of intensive use of agrochemicals on water quality, on soils, and on the health of human
beings and of animals; and over the mining of water resources were married to the old
charge that the GR technology was the instrument of Western corporate capital (some-
what strangely, perhaps, given that the seeds were developed especially in the interna-
tional public sector) and represented a threat to national food security or “sovereigny”
(though, of course, ironically, India at least achieved “food sovereignty” through the GR).
The whole was also tied, with especial force and effectiveness by Vandana Shiva (1991),
to ideas about the value of “indigenous” farming knowledge, the merits of “traditional”
agriculture (involving mixtures and rotations of crops, which were held often to be more
productive than GR monocultures) and the virtues of a peasant way of life. There is sub-
stance to all these arguments (except perhaps, the last, which is a value judgment), but the
presentation of them by writers like Shiva was stronger in terms of rhetoric than of fact,
and dependent upon generalization from a few specific cases or sets of data in a way that
was quite as ambitious as that of the early critics of the GR. The power of environmental-
ism has been such, however, that it trumped concerns about agricultural development
and food supplies, especially in regard to Africa. Robert Paarlberg (2008, chapter 3), for
example, thinks that populist environmentalism—through its influence on large num-
bers of western NGOs—has been a key factor in stalling efforts to bring a GR to Africa.
The controversies over the GR reflect different “framings” that have influenced the col-
lection of evidence and the ways in which facts are viewed. The power of different fram-
ings is more cultural and political than it is dependent upon scientific understanding, as
both Herring (2010) and Glover (2010) argue—though the former believes that trans-
genic varieties have been subject to particularly effective negative framing, whereas the
latter claims they have received unduly positive constructions. Both refer to the effective-
ness of particular individuals whose authority is accepted, who serve as “epistemic bro-
kers” (Vandana Shiva has been one), successfully popularizing their particular readings
of complex and contested scientific evidence. Different framings reflect differing values
and worldviews that are not subject to empirical refutation (for a general discussion, see
Thompson et al. 1990). But this is not a reason for refusing to test the propositions that
follow from them as rigorously as possible—as has happened, for example, in the case
of the “polarization thesis” in the context of the GR. The framing of evidence in regard
to social questions- which is comparable with the “spin” that is now commonly put on
events and problems by politicians and their speechwriters—is inevitable. So much the
more important, therefore, that all “framings” be subjected to critical scrutiny.
The “GM” Controversy
Schurman and Munro (2010) argue that three factors underpin the “GM” contro-
versy. First, there was the emergence of the “knowledge economy.” In the 1950s, pub-
licly funded research led most agricultural advances (notably the GR), but by the 1970s,