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

这个项目的目的是研究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。目前关于跨国公民社会的研究表明，愿意和（或）能够与制定全球经济规则的正式政治机构谈判的组织与（不得不）从事更具对抗性做法的组织之间的两极分化日益加剧。民间社会关于转基因食品的辩论尤其具有争议性，因此提供了一个独特的背景，可以经验性地解决对有组织的跨国民间社会内部日益扩大的参与差距的日益扩大的关切。在学生调查员参与记录拉丁美洲区域民间社会网络总体规模、组成和重要性的当前研究的基础上，拟议的项目是对两个跨国组织网络的比较、多地点分析，这两个跨国组织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同行联系起来。该项目旨在探索政治背景、决策形式以及对基因工程的文化理解如何影响有关使用合作与对抗倡导的网络谈判。该研究特别关注两个网络（在区域和网络结构方面）不同位置的实践和观点，以探索内部民主的程度。研究设计包括与墨西哥、洪都拉斯、德国、比利时和美国各组织站点的关键网络代表进行半结构化和开放式访谈，以检查网络连接和决策过程的历史和特征，并捕捉与基因工程有关的话语实践。此外，墨西哥和德国网络参与者的两个密集案例研究将有助于探讨待分析的两个跨国网络的两个不同的非中心地点的当地日常做法。在这些地方的参与者观察将特别关注个人领导的作用、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，以追踪倡导战略在实践中如何形成。最后，将根据参与组织维护的网络活动报告和网站的内容和话语分析，研究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批判性地重新评估问责制和代表性在这种地方-全球背景下的意义。拟议的项目不是假设传统的民主合法性概念，而是试图促进社会科学对政治和文化实践和愿景的理解，这些实践和愿景同时出现在既定的政治参与渠道之上和之下，以及这些对局势的不同定义将挑战民主代表的主导观念的条件。

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.