5th Global Conference
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers
Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th
July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 12: Strategies and Corporate Agriculture
Chair: Nina Hall
Reports from session Chairs of 7(a) and 11(a)
Judith Andre and Martin Phillipson
Discursive Strategies on GM Policy: Theoretical Assessment
and European Comparative Aspects
Eszter
Kollar; Attila Fonyó; Miklós Sükösd
Centre for Human Rights, LUISS University of Rome;
Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest; Central European University,
Budapest
New multi-disciplinary policy themes, such as biotechnology,
genetic engineering or food safety pose exemplary challenges for contemporary
politics as well as political science. While similar areas of public
policy making had been traditionally perceived as technical matters requiring
mostly scientific expertise, today’s publics, new political actors
and movements with an increased sensibility to risks, and endorsing a
rich plurality of values and interests, ask a say in the policy process.
Besides challenging the fact-value divide, they question the borderline
between public (state) and private (market), as well as the exclusive
legitimacy of existing political processes and outcomes. This complexity
gives the floor for a large number of perspectives interpreting the policy
problems and the alternative solutions.
In our proposed paper we discuss
theoretical and methodological considerations for a discursive analysis
of GM policy-making (policy issues related to genetically modified organisms).
We take a theoretical position, using evidence from our ongoing Hungarian-Italian
comparative empirical research project. We chose the theory and method
of argumentative
discourse analysis in order to anchor socially constructed discourses
in the argumentative practices, social contexts, and institutional and
other power relations, which shape the different discourses present in
GM policy debates. This allows us to move from the traditional realist-pluralist
policy approaches, understood as the outcome of power struggles of interest
groups, towards a narrative-discursive analysis, without fully abandoning
the former conception.
We identify the main GM policy discourses
along four dimensions, based on the theoretical works of Maarten Hajer,
John Dryzek and others, slightly complementing them:
1) What are the basic axioms that are used as reference points to legitimate
political positions and boundaries?
2) Identifying the subject: how do actors problematize the GM issue?
Which public policy area do they connect it with (environment, agriculture,
consumer protection, food safety, access to information etc.)?
3) How radical or moderate is the discourse in the political space?
4) Key metaphors, style and linguistic tools.
As a result of our argumentative
discourse analysis of GM policy making processes, our theoretical contribution
is the following:
a) We identify clear patterns between the different discourses and the
actors, which allows us to anchor discourses to certain types of actors,
and explore the mechanism of discourse-coalition formation among them.
b) We explore mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion in GM policy making
processes. Policy arenas are selective in what is considered a legitimate
political argument, thus some groups are excluded from access to policy-making. Their
discourses are considered illegitimate, and their claims invalid.
c) Some political groups and movements active in GM policy making are
likely to shift from their original discourses towards more legitimate
and moderate ones, depending on the relevant contexts of policy formation.
At the same time, these groups preserve their ability to use more radical
discourses to mobilize supporters and communicate with the general public.
In short, we suggest that these actors are politically adaptive and
discursively multi-lingual.
The Impact of Green Revolution and Corporate Agriculture on Environment
and Livelihood in the Context of Sindh, Pakistan
Wali
Haider
Research and Publication Coordinator,
ROOTS for Equity,
Karachi, Pakistan
No abstract is presently available