Soybeans and Power: Genetically Modified Crops, Environmental Politics, and Social Movements in Argentina

by Pablo Lapegna

Overview

Although Argentina's use of genetically modified (GM) soybean seeds has spurred a major agricultural boom, it has also had a negative impact on many communities. In Soybeans and Power, Pablo Lapegna explores the ways in which these communities have coped with GM soybean expansion. Peasants initially resisted, yet ultimately adapted to the new agricultural technologies, playing an active role in their own demobilization in order to maneuver the situation to their advantage. A rare glimpse into the life cycle of a social movement, Soybeans and Power gives voice to the communities most adversely affected by GM technology and the strategies that they have enacted in order to survive.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190215163
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/06/2016
Series:	Global and Comparative Ethnography
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Pablo Lapegna is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Georgia

Table of Contents

Introduction GM Crops, Global Ethnography, and the Dynamics of De-Mobilization Chapter One: The Dark Side of the Boom Neoliberalization, GM Soybeans, and Environmental Change in Argentina Chapter Two: Emergence Peasants, Politics, and Patrons: Rural Social Movements in Formosa (1970s-2000s) Chapter Three: Contention Peasants Confronting GM Soybeans and Agrochemical Exposure (2003) Chapter Four: Demobilization Peasants, Governments, and Constituents Across Political Scales (2004-2013) Chapter Five: Accommodation Peasants Negotiating GM Crops and Agrochemical Exposure (2009-2013) Conclusion: Companion Planting The Crucible of GM Crops, Global Processes, and Social Movements Appendix: On the Ethnographic Craft

Editorial Reviews

"offer[s] a more nuanced understanding of local or national dynamics embedded in global configurations ... [Lapegna's] local perspective on the peasants who actually suffer from GMO use particularly contributes to our understanding of why these people accept and accommodate to activities that ultimately prove harmful to them ... The analysis of the mechanisms of demobilization is certainly the most important contribution of the study and adds to a still incipient body of research that aims at understanding why people desist from protests although underlying grievances have not been solved. Lapegna's mechanisms are convincing." — Bettina Schorr, N/A, Latin American Research Review

"This is a brilliant book, one sorely needed. Lapegna's beautifully-written ethnography of the contested politics of GM crops in Argentina is critical in the best sense of the word - a vital contribution to a debate that is often rendered in black and white."-Wendy Wolford, Cornell University

"Pablo Lapegna's ethnographic research in a province of Argentina will interest anyone concerned about the global struggle over the spread of genetically modified crops. He tells a fascinating story, one without defenseless victims or stoic heroes. It is also a story that will especially appeal to anyone interested in understanding how social movements work, both how they mobilize and how they demobilize, how they challenge powerful elites and how they accommodate and adapt themselves to a world they cannot fully control."-Jeff Goodwin, New York University

"...a magisterial contribution to social movement theory and to the critical history of commodities pioneered by Sidney Mintz in his classic study of sugar. The dramatic spread of GM soy in South America brought widespread agrochemical contamination and also generated resistance in the countryside. Lapegna's seamless analysis integrates key dimensions of this story, from the technological innovations behind GM crops and troubling issues of corporate power to why and how peasants both mobilize to confront this new threat and at times eschew mobilization in favor of patronage politics."-Marc Edelman, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York

From the Publisher