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

本论文项目的中心主题是研究如何民主决策的科学和技术发生在一个发展中社会，公民社会是相对发达。此外，本研究报告还探讨了在一个努力寻求通过发展满足其人口基本人类需求的社会中，如何将伦理和价值观纳入有关科学和技术的决定。自20世纪90年代末以来，Bt棉花在印度的引入一直是持续争议的根源。这场争论和围绕印度Bt棉花问题的讨论使人们有可能问，对新的科学农业技术达成社会理解和集体决策的过程是什么。伦理和价值观如何进入围绕农业生物技术的争论？如何利用科学促进行为者的努力，或如何不利用科学阻碍其参与决策进程？在一个民主的发展中社会，科学和非科学的考虑因素（道德、信仰、需求和偏好）如何在决策过程中发挥作用？该项目的资金支持通过三种方法收集数据：半结构化和结构化访谈，参与者观察和内容分析，以分析科学，伦理和价值观如何用于农业生物技术的话语。

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.