Disseration Research: Seeds of Doubt: An Ethnographic Investigation of Biosafety in Contemporary Egypt

拟议的科学和技术研究论文改进拨款侧重于转基因生物（GMOs）的科学不确定性，以研究如何在复杂的地方和跨国谈判中制定当代埃及的科学，生命和危险问题。采用多层次人种学方法，该项目首先提出三个具体问题：(a)埃及科学家认为转基因生物对环境构成何种风险？(b)它们使用什么科学程序来检验这些风险？(c)这些风险观念和做法体现和改造了哪些具体的文化信仰和社会关切？通过在埃及的文化和历史母体中定位生物安全问题，本研究探讨了自然与人工、科学与伪科学、知识与信仰之间的问题分歧。随着埃及越来越多地发现自己陷入美国和欧盟之间关于农业生物技术的贸易战之中，本研究调查了更广泛的社会和文化问题以及地缘政治环境如何影响科学决策和实践。该项目需要15个月的实地调查，并使用以下数据收集技术：参与观察，统计调查，半结构化访谈和档案研究。在关于生物技术的辩论中，经常被留在黑盒子里的是具有文化影响力的生命、自然和危险的概念。通过研究埃及科学家如何阐述这些概念，这个项目可以为关于破坏自然的辩论提供一个独特的表述，并为全球环境风险的论点提供另一种选择。随着科学知识和实践渗透了伦理问题，而伦理问题又受到宗教因素的影响，这项研究可以增强我们对价值取向的选择如何影响风险评估过程的理解，更具体地说，伊斯兰传统如何影响科学家。对转基因生物的反应在连接科学与现代性的人类学著作以及与伊斯兰科学的接触中，这项研究可以提供一个独特的视角，通过它来审视科学与宗教之间的棘手关系，这种关系在当代国际地缘政治环境中变得越来越普遍。在科学家、学者、政治家和活动家之间关于农业生物技术的成本和收益的激烈辩论的核心，是关于转基因生物影响的科学不确定性问题。随着美国和欧盟之间关于转基因生物的斗争愈演愈烈，贸易和对外援助对其他国家的影响也越来越明显，批判性地审视、理解和交流生物安全科学是如何运作的变得迫在眉睫。同样重要的是，探索如何将科学事实载入国际和地方文化特有的意义和关切。通过一个以当地为基础的研究项目，该项目将分析影响埃及生物安全决策的具体因素和实践，并可以为改善科学家和非科学界之间的交流提供指导。通过与从事生物技术工作的科学家和非学术出版物的持续沟通，这项研究可以对理解和管理农业生物技术的风险作出建设性的贡献。

The proposed Science and Technology Studies Dissertation Improvement Grant focuses on the scientific uncertainties of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to examine how questions of science, life, and danger are formulated in contemporary Egypt amidst complex local and transnational negotiations. Employing a multi-level ethnographic approach, this project starts by asking three specific questions: (a) What kinds of risks do Egyptian scientists perceive GMOs pose to the environment? (b) What scientific procedures do they use to test these risks? and (c) What specific cultural beliefs and social concerns do these risk perceptions and practices embody and rework? By positioning the problem of biosafety in Egypt's cultural and historical matrix, this study explores the problematic divides between natural and artificial, science and pseudoscience, knowledge and belief. As Egypt increasingly finds itself caught in the middle of trade battles between the United States and the European Union over agricultural biotechnology, this research investigates how broader social and cultural concerns and geopolitical circumstances influence scientific decisions and practices. This project entails 15 months of fieldwork and uses the following data-collection techniques: participant observation, statistical surveys, semi-structured interviews, and archival research. Often left black-boxed in the debates over biotechnology are the culturally potent concepts of life, nature and danger. By examining how these concepts are articulated by scientists in Egypt this project can present a unique formulation of the debates over tampering with nature and provide an alternative to the thesis of global environmental risks. As scientific knowledge and practices become seeped with ethical questions, which in turn are informed by religious factors, this research can enhance our understanding of how value-laden choices influence the risk assessment process, and more specifically, how Islamic traditions might affect the scientists. responses toward GMOs. In bridging anthropological works on science and modernity and engagements with Islamic science, this research can provide a unique lens through which to examine the vexed relationship between science and religion, a relationship that has become ever more prevalent in the contemporary international geopolitical environment. At the heart of the heated debates among scientists, scholars, politicians and activists about the costs and benefits of agricultural biotechnology lays the problem of scientific uncertainty about the effects of GMOs. As the battle between the United States and the European Union over GMOs is burgeoning and the trade and foreign aid effects on other countries are becoming noticeable, it becomes urgent to critically examine, understand and communicate how the science of biosafety works. Also important is to explore the ways in which scientific facts are inscribed with international and local culturally-specific meanings and concerns. Through a locally-grounded research program, this project will analyze the specific factors and practices shaping biosafety decisions in Egypt and can provide guidelines for an improved communication between scientists and the non-scientific community. Through sustained communication with scientists working on biotechnology and publications in non-academic venues this research can make a constructive contribution to understanding and managing the risks of agricultural biotechnology.