Dissertation Research: Marginality, Crop Genetic Resources Conservation and the Re-establishment of Highland Rice Agriculture Following War in Cambodia

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Project Summary: Dove/Padwe - Invisible ScienceNear the end of a period of protracted armed conflict in Cambodia, in 1986 the International Rice Research Institute initiated a far-reaching and well-funded effort to re-introduce to Cambodian farmers a number of lowland rice varieties that had been lost during the war. At the same time, an analogous process was taking place in the highlands of northeast Cambodia, exchanging seeds and information through transnational social networks, ethnic minority farmers re-introduced numerous crop cultigens to the northeast hills. Yet this effort was largely invisible to outside observers. Drawing on recent approaches in science and technology studies, this proposal argues that the distinction allowing the formal IRRI program to be understood as scientific, while the seemingly informal highland crop-reintroduction program is excluded from that category, is a false one, the product of boundary-making activities. The highland farmers are clearly experts, although uncredentialed ones. Understood as a scientific endeavor, then, the conservation and re-introduction of crop genetic resources in the highlands was mediated by social, political and cultural factors. This research project seeks to understand the exchange of information, seeds and resources characteristic of highland in situ conservation practices. Specifically, 1) how do highland farmers produce knowledge about crop varieties? 2) how is information and plant genetic material exchanged? how do seed exchange networks function, and what other forms of information or exchange travel along them? 3) finally, why does this form of science appear invisible to outside observers, such as the experts working on the IRRI project? how is this invisibility produced, and how does the fact of its marginality contribute to the form that insitu plant genetic resources conservation has taken? Research activities will consist of over two years of ethnographic field research among highland farmers. In addition to observing and participating in the daily lives of farmers, by asking who got which seeds from whom, the researcher will follow the chain-of-custody of the re-introduced cultivars back along the networks of exchange through which they travelled to reach their present day locations.Intellectual merit: This study will expand the scope of science and technology studies by investigating a non-Western, marginalized form of applied agricultural science. The project will contribute theoretical insight into the crafting of knowledge undertaken outside the framework of state-centric and capital-intensive scientific research paradigms, and will contribute to a further refinement of STS scholars' understandings of science as culture and practice. The subject has intrinsic interest because of the importance of in situ genetic resource conservation and crop reintroduction for post-war and post-conflict settings. Broader impacts: By disseminating the results of this study broadly, to audiences interested in anthropology, science studies, alternative agricultural development, and post-war reconstruction, the study will encourage policy and research on alternatives to state-centered crop rehabilitation programs. By calling attention to the agency of individual farmers in the process of scientific discovery, the study encourages the broader representation of underrepresented groups in the crafting of science research and policy.