Routledge Governing Agricultural Sustainability: Global lessons from GM crops (Pathways to Sustainability)

Although GM crops are seen by their advocates as a key component of the future of world agriculture and as part of the solution for world poverty and hunger, their uptake has not been smooth nor universal: they have been marred by controversy and all too commonly their regulation has been challenged as inadequate, even biased. This book aims to understand these dynamics, examining the impacts of GM crops in diverse contexts and their potentials to contribute to sustainable agricultural futures. Part 1 draws on research from three global ‘rising powers’ – Brazil, India and Mexico – exploring the views of scientists, farmers and publics. Using a diverse array of ethnographic and qualitative methodologies, the book examines the dynamics that have underpinned the controversy in three diverse geo-political contexts, the manner in which dominant institutional framings have been closely aligned with the interests of powerful elites, and the multiple ways in which these have been resisted through local, symbolic and material practices. Part 2 comprises a series of short comment pieces from 11 leading social and natural scientists responding to the question of how to develop a policy framework for the responsible innovation of sustainable, culturally appropriate and socially just agricultural GM technologies. This innovative book offers new insights for researchers and postgraduates in Science and technology studies, Agro-ecology and Environmental Studies, Development studies, Anthropology, Human Geography, Sociology, Political Science, Public Administration, Latin American studies, and Asian studies. Review "Distilling a decade of research at UK institutions, this wide-ranging collection wisely shifts our attention from the disputed technical properties of GM crops to the kinds of politics needed to accommodate GM agriculture on a global scale. If one book could prod the GM debate out of its current sterile stalemate, then this would be it." –Sheila Jasanoff, Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Harvard Kennedy School, USA "Can GM crops feed the world? Such an apparently straightforward question is revealed in this book instead as a lens on the daunting intersections of technological advance, globalization, political and economic power, and cultural identity. Through the subtle studies in this volume, GM crops become nothing less than a powerful and poignant metaphor for whatever it is that seems to have replaced the ruthless innocence of modernity."–Daniel Sarewitz, Professor of Science and Society and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes (CSPO) at Arizona State University, USA "A fascinating and unique book addressing the development and deployment of GM crops in a wide variety of different agroecosystems and countries. It steers between the unhelpful dichotomies of the past, and shows that GM agriculture is neither inevitably a good thing or a bad thing: it depends on the social, ecological and political circumstances."–Jules Pretty OBE, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Environment & Society at the University of Essex, UK "The quest to document, to make sense of and to advocate solutions to the continuing controversies surrounding genetically modified crops has spawned a large library of literature. This edited but integrated volume both contributes to that discussion and extends it in new directions. Rather than starting with an analysis of the claims and counterclaims for GM crops, it asks why such crops have not been viewed as a universal public good. In asking that question, it moves beyond the endless polemics and identifies how and under what conditions GM crops might be widely accepted. Moreover, by focusing on Mexico, Brazil and India – three nations where empirical research has been limited – the authors show how these technologies are framed differently in different settings. In so doing the authors illustrate the limits of both