GMO doublespeak: An analysis of power and discourse in Canadian debates over agricultural biotechnology

Abstract

It has been over 20 years since Canada's first commercially grown genetically modified (GM) crops were approved, and debates over these contentious products continue to gain momentum. Literature exploring Canada's GMO debates has yet to focus specifically on the discourse of probiotech public relations campaigns and anti-biotech movements. This paper helps fill this gap with an analysis of power relations regarding efforts to inform public opinion on the topic of agricultural biotechnology. I explore these power relations in two arguments. First, I argue that the Canadian state's overall positive position toward agricultural biotechnology provides leverage to pro-biotech public relations, while delimiting the direction of anti-biotech campaigns. Second, I argue that the potency of pro-biotech frames are constituted and sustained by historically and culturally embedded norms and values, which add additional challenges for antibiotech campaigns. These findings reveal a clearer picture of the complexity of power relations within agri-biotech discourse, and the extent to which anti-biotech groups may be disadvantaged in these debates.

Book Review: Civil Society and Social Movements in Food System Governance, Peter Andrée, Jill K. Clark, Charles Z. Levkoe, and Kristen Lowitt, Eds. London and New York: Routledge.

“…The editors offer the framework of a governance engagement continuum to frame the position of food movements between multi-stakeholderism (weak engagement) and self-governance/polycentrism (strong engagement). They draw on Clapp and Fuchs (2009) and Tourangeau (2017) to describe how civil society actors navigate and execute a variety of powers to gain footing in multi-scalar governance structures. Food movements draw on and work within instrumental power (influence through direct action), discursive power (writing narratives, establishing new norms), structural power (determining agendas and the scope of influence), and constitutive power (defining legitimacy and influence of powers).…”