Southern Whispers

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"Southern Whispers"

• - The Symmetry of the Social Constuction of GMO
  and the South -

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Researcher

• Irene Olaussen
• ESST, 2002
• BTD-Maastricht

3
Overview

• Background
• Aims and Objectives
• Research questions
• Methodology

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During our 2 hours together today

• An estimated 2.000 people will die of causes
  related to food insecurity.
• - the hunger site

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Background

• 790 millions food insecure people in the world
  today (HDR, 2001)
• The Millennium Summit aims to half this by the
  year 2015

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Background

• It is absoulutely disgraceful to aim to half the
  worlds food insecure population within 2015 when
  we have enough food for the whole world already
  today.
• The goal should be zero!
• -Fidel Castro

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Background

• Modern biotechnology emerges as a potential tool
  for human development (HDR, 2001)

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Background

• ! But no technological fix
• Lack of purchasing power
• No access to lobby activities
• Lack of barganing power in international
  regulatory bodies

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Background

• Is national policy making on GMO in rich
  countries relevant for developing countries?
• - Why?
• the complexity and global character of the
  agricultural chain, and the intensity of trade
  in agricultural products between the developed
  and developing countries gives national policies
  effects on an international level.

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• Developing countries dependence on rich
  countries
• RD capacaties
• Positive sentiments to GMO for donations and
  programme start ups
• Markets for GMO products
• Civil society in the North influence the public
  opinion in developing countries
• Public funding and control of RD results
  (South-Africa/Golden Rice cases)

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Aims Objectives

• It is often very hard to ask directly if new
  technologies and ways of doing science are
  instruments for increasing social equality and
  democratically distributed well-being. Those
  questions are readily made to seem merely
  ideological, while issues of safety and labelling
  can be cast themselves technical, and so open to
  rational resolution. The power to define what
  counts as technical or political is very much at
  the heart of technoscience. To produce belief
  that the boundary between the technical and the
  political, and so between nature and society, is
  a real one, grounded in matters of facts, is a
  central function of the Scientific Revolution and
  progress (Metcalf, Haraway, 1997). My goal is
  to, through the STS theoretical framework, try to
  put the boundary between the technical and the
  political into permanent question.

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Aims Objectives

• The goal of this paper, then, is threefold

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Aims Objectives

• 1
• Politisication of technological culture

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Aims Objectives

• 2.
• Conceptual framework

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Conceptual framework

• SCOT
• Interpretative Flexibility
• Relevant Social Groups
• Closure
• Stabilisation

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Conceptual Framework

• Feminist theory
• Situation
• Symmetry

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Aims Objectives

• 3.
• Case study
• Terlouw debategtSouthern Voices
• The Jewl

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Research questions

• How is the Dutch public perception of developing
  countries as a relevant social group constructed
  in the course of the debate ?

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The South

• What is the South

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The South

• A GM Banana a day could keep the doctor away
• -Cyrus Ndiritu
• Former director, KARI

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Research questions

• 2. How is the Dutch public percetion of GMO as a
  tool for human development socially constructed
  in the course of the debate?

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GMO

• What is GMO"

sharing_at_monsanto.com.
the Greenpeace Cyberactivist Community... Have
Your Say On Frankenfood by Radagast on 12
December2000 _at_ 0103 AM Action Link. The
marathon ...

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Research questions

• 3. What is the symmetrical relationship between
  GMO, and developing countries as socially
  constructed categories in the course of the
  debate?

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Methodology

• Textual analysis
• Discourses analysis
• Case study
• Interviews

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The End

• Big Hands everybody !!!

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Discussion
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