Dissertation Research Improvement Grants: Dissertation Research: Dynamics of Discourse about Abribiotechnology: Bt cotton in India

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

The central theme of this dissertation project is to examine how democratic decision-making about science and technology occurs in a developing society where civil society is relatively well developed. Moreover, this study explores how ethics and values are brought into decisions concerning science and technology in a society which is trying to find ways to meet basic human needs of its population through development. The introduction of Bt cotton in India has been the source of ongoing controversy since the late 1990s. This controversy and the discourse surrounding issues of Bt cotton in India makes it possible to ask what are the processes of arriving at social understandings and collective decisions about newly available science-based agricultural technologies. How do ethics and values enter into the controversy surrounding agribiotechnology? How are the efforts of actors facilitated by using science or inhibited from participation in decision-making processes by not using science? In a democratic developing society, how do science and non-scientific considerations (ethics, beliefs, needs and preferences) play out in decision-making processes? Funds for this project support the collection of data through three methods: semi-structured and structured interviews, participant observation, and content analysis to analyze how science, ethics and values are used in discourse concerning agribiotechnology.