Doctoral Dissertation Research: "Organisms and Organizations: Transnational Civil Society and Genetically Modified Food in Latin America, Europe, and the United States"

博士论文研究：“生物体和组织：拉丁美洲、欧洲和美国的跨国公民社会和转基因食品”

• 批准号: 0302506
• 负责人: Roberto Korzeniewicz
• 金额: $ 0.75万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2003
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2003-05-01 至 2004-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0302506&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Organisms; Organizations

The purpose of this project is to examine the organizational linkages and cultural meanings connecting civil society organizations in Latin America and Europe that are involved in debates about plant biotechnology and genetically modified food. Current research about transnational civil society suggests an increasing polarization between organizations willing and/or able to negotiate with the formal political institutions establishing the rules of the global economy and those that (have to) engage in more confrontational practices. Civil society debates about genetically modified food are particularly contentious and thus offer a unique setting for empirically addressing these widening concerns about a growing participatory gap within organized transnational civil society. Building on the student investigator's participation in current research documenting the overall scale, composition, and significance of regional civil society networks in Latin America, the proposed project is a comparative, multi-location analysis of two transnational organizational networks that link non-governmental organizations and farmers' organizations in Latin America with their counterparts in Europe and the United States. The project seeks to explore how political context, forms of decision-making, as well as cultural understandings of genetic engineering shape network negotiations about the use of collaborative versus confrontational advocacy. The study pays particular attention to the practices and perspectives evident in different locations of both networks (in regional as well as network structural terms) in order to probe the extent of internal democracy. The research design involves semi-structured and open-ended interviews with key network representatives in various organizational sites in Mexico, Honduras, Germany, Belgium, and the US to examine the history and character of network linkages and decision-making processes, and to capture the discursive practices relating to genetic engineering. In addition, two intensive case studies of network participants in Mexico and Germany will serve to explore local everyday practices in two different non-central locations of both transnational networks to be analyzed. Participant observation in these locations will pay particular attention the role of personal leadership, the organization of office work, and the interactions with network members, other civil society organizations, as well as state/international institutions in order to trace how advocacy strategies shape up in practice. Finally, the historical trajectory and broader cultural and political significance of civil society networks concerned with plant biotechnology will be examined based on content and discourse analysis of network activity reports and websites maintained by participating organizations. The proposed research will contribute to a critical reassessment of the meaning of accountability and representation in this local-global context. Rather than assuming conventional conceptions of democratic legitimacy, the proposed project attempts to contribute to social science understanding of the political and cultural practices and visions that emerge simultaneously above and below established channels of political participation and the conditions under which these divergent definitions of the situation will challenge dominant notions of democratic representation.

该项目的目的是审查拉丁美洲和欧洲参与植物生物技术和转基因食品辩论的民间社会组织之间的组织联系和文化意义。目前关于跨国民间社会的研究表明，愿意和/或能够与正式政治机构谈判建立全球经济规则的组织和那些（不得不）从事更具对抗性的做法的组织之间的两极分化日益严重。民间社会关于转基因食品的辩论特别有争议，因此提供了一个独特的背景，可以从经验上解决这些日益扩大的关切，即有组织的跨国民间社会的参与差距越来越大。 在学生调查员参与目前记录拉丁美洲区域民间社会网络的总体规模、组成和重要性的研究的基础上，拟议的项目是对两个跨国组织网络进行比较和多地点分析，这两个网络将拉丁美洲的非政府组织和农民组织与欧洲和美国的对应组织联系起来。 该项目旨在探讨政治背景，决策形式以及对基因工程的文化理解如何塑造关于使用合作与对抗宣传的网络谈判。本研究特别注意两个网络（在区域和网络结构方面）的不同地点的做法和观点，以探讨内部民主的程度。 研究设计包括半结构化和开放式的采访，在墨西哥，洪都拉斯，德国，比利时和美国的各个组织网站的主要网络代表，研究历史和网络的联系和决策过程的特点，并捕捉有关遗传工程的话语实践。此外，对墨西哥和德国网络参与者的两项深入的案例研究将有助于探讨两个跨国网络的两个不同非中心地点的当地日常做法。参与者在这些地点的观察将特别关注个人领导力的作用、办公室工作的组织以及与网络成员、其他民间社会组织以及国家/国际机构的互动，以追踪宣传策略在实践中的形成方式。最后，将根据对参与组织维护的网络活动报告和网站的内容和话语分析，审查与植物生物技术有关的民间社会网络的历史轨迹和更广泛的文化和政治意义。拟议的研究将有助于在这一地方-全球背景下对问责制和代表性的意义进行批判性的重新评估。拟议的项目不是假设民主合法性的传统概念，而是试图促进社会科学对在既定政治参与渠道之上和之下同时出现的政治和文化做法和愿景的理解，以及这些对局势的不同定义将挑战民主代表制的主导概念的条件。