Cultural Politics and Resistance to GMOs

Abstract

In the previous chapter, I proposed a cultural approach and outlined how it could be partially reconciled with the study of politics. Important cultural elements, such as moral judgements and deeply embedded attitudes towards ‘nature’, could thus be joined by more observable political dynamics, namely the activities of interest groups, the impact of the media, and the dynamics of political systems and bureaucracies. To varying degrees, these are examined in this chapter. However, these factors cannot be understood outside a broader context which has deep historical roots and is constituted by pre-existing cultural dispositions. Thus, I explore the cultural politics of agbiotech on both sides of the Atlantic.