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

项目摘要：DOVE/PADWE--隐形科学1986年，在柬埔寨旷日持久的武装冲突接近尾声时，国际水稻研究所发起了一项影响深远且资金充足的努力，向柬埔寨农民重新介绍战争期间丢失的一些低地水稻品种。与此同时，柬埔寨东北部的高地也发生了类似的过程，通过跨国社交网络交换种子和信息，少数民族农民将许多作物种植者重新引入东北部山区。然而，这一努力在很大程度上是外部观察人士看不见的。借鉴科学技术研究的最新方法，这一建议认为，允许将正式的IRRI计划理解为科学的，而看似非正式的高原作物重新引入计划被排除在这一类别之外的区别是错误的，是划定边界活动的产物。高地农民显然是专家，尽管他们没有资格。因此，高地作物遗传资源的保护和重新引入被理解为一项科学努力，受到社会、政治和文化因素的影响。本研究项目旨在了解高地原址保护实践中信息、种子和资源的交流特点。具体来说，1)高原农民如何生产有关作物品种的知识？2)信息和植物遗传物质是如何交换的？种子交换网络是如何运作的？还有哪些其他形式的信息或交换通过它们传播？3)最后，为什么这种形式的科学对外部观察者来说是看不见的，比如参与IRRI项目的专家？这种隐蔽性是如何产生的，其边缘化的事实如何有助于原位植物遗传资源保护的形式？研究活动将包括两年多的高原农民人种学实地研究。除了观察和参与农民的日常生活之外，通过询问谁从谁那里得到了哪些种子，研究人员将沿着交换网络追踪重新引入的品种的保管链，它们通过这些网络到达他们现在的位置。智力价值：这项研究将通过调查一种非西方的、边缘化的应用农业科学来扩大科学和技术研究的范围。该项目将有助于从理论上洞察在以国家为中心和资本密集型的科学研究范式框架外开展的知识的形成，并将有助于进一步完善STS学者对科学作为文化和实践的理解。由于原地遗传资源保护和作物重新引入对战后和冲突后环境的重要性，这一主题具有内在的兴趣。更广泛的影响：通过向对人类学、科学研究、替代农业发展和战后重建感兴趣的受众广泛传播这项研究的结果，该研究将鼓励对以国家为中心的作物恢复计划的替代方案的政策和研究。通过唤起人们对个体农民在科学发现过程中的作用的关注，这项研究鼓励在科学研究和政策制定过程中更广泛地代表代表不足的群体。

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.