IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/eurjdr/v20y2008i3p432-447.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What makes crop biotechnology find its roots? The technological culture of Bt cotton in Gujarat, India

Author

Listed:
  • Esha Shah

Abstract

This paper challenges the framing of debates on crop biotechnology in terms of 'impact assessment' or 'success or failure'. To evaluate the social desirability of technological choice, the paper socio-anthropologically examines the cultural, productive, environmental, and cognitive contexts within which the cotton-growing farmers in Gujarat adopt, develop and diffuse genetically engineered crop biotechnology. The paper shows that crop biotechnology represents a technological culture with a specific value framework which is endorsed commonly by both multinational companies and certain cotton-growing farmers in Gujarat. The cultivation and multiplication of Bt seeds owe their popularity to the fact that genetically modified seed technology did not make any paradigmatic change in the agricultural practices and agrarian relations shaped by the Green Revolution, which has privileged and consolidated the social power of resource-rich farmers. Bt cotton's success is thus part of the successful reproduction of these cotton-growing farmers' historically acquired and culturally consolidated ability to perform with the technology.

Suggested Citation

  • Esha Shah, 2008. "What makes crop biotechnology find its roots? The technological culture of Bt cotton in Gujarat, India," The European Journal of Development Research, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 432-447.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:eurjdr:v:20:y:2008:i:3:p:432-447
    DOI: 10.1080/09578810802245584
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article&doi=10.1080/09578810802245584&magic=repec&7C&7C8674ECAB8BB840C6AD35DC6213A474B5
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/09578810802245584?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arjen Zegwaard & Arthur Petersen & Philippus Wester, 2015. "Climate change and ontological politics in the Dutch Delta," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 132(3), pages 433-444, October.
    2. Fischer, Klara, 2016. "Why new crop technology is not scale-neutral—A critique of the expectations for a crop-based African Green Revolution," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(6), pages 1185-1194.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:eurjdr:v:20:y:2008:i:3:p:432-447. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FEDR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.