Reading Summaries (9): Anti-Genetic Engineering Movement in the U.S. and Britain

During the second half of the 1990s, European activists opposed to the use of genetic engineering (GE) in the food supply. Unlike European activists were gained significant achievement in the anti-GE movement, U.S. activists were gained little traction. Why was the European/Britain anti-biotech movement so effective, while the U.S. campaign was not? For this reason, the author addresses the comparative analysis of anti-biotechnology activism in the United States and Britain. Their analysis draws on both primary and secondary data sources: in-depth interviews, extensive media coverage, trade journals, public opinion survey data, newspaper and magazine articles, scholarly articles on the British supermarket sector, and detailed field notes from an in-depth study of six British supermarkets in the mid-1990s (p. 168-169). Using the Global Community Chains (GCC) literature, they show how the GCC for food was a critical factor that enabled anti-GE activists and exploring the different outcomes of these two very similar social movements.

GCC analysis focuses specifically on a subset of political-economic phenomena (the elements of industrial organization) which very useful for analyzing movements that aim to change the behavior of corporate actors. GCC identifies and conceptualizes the organization of commodity production and consumption and seeks trough the relationships among the players in these activities. There are two main types of governance structures in GCC: producer-driven chains and buyer-driven chains. The governance structure and firm’s relationships/participation in the commodity chain more or less vulnerable to social movement actions. Industry target’s vulnerability should vary positively with the number of links in the chain construction. Furthermore, the degree to which social movements pressure is successful will be based on the level of dependency among actors and how much “leakage” there is along the chain.

Culture and cultural processes shape the organization and operation of global commodity networks in two interrelated ways: they do so through their role in constructing the meanings of particular products, and they do so by influencing the ways of thinking and behaving of GCC actors. Anti-GE activists may be able to tap into certain cultural schemata to influence the way particular commodities are perceived and the meanings people attach to them. Cultural Schemata can be defined as a “knowledge structures that represent objects or events and provide default assumptions about their characteristics, relationships, and entailments under conditions of incomplete information” (DiMaggio, 1997). For instance, the fact that Monsanto was deeply misguided and unable to read Europe's political climate and culture accurately made it highly vulnerable to activist attacks on its behavior and reputation.

Anti-biotech activism in Britain began in the 1980s, and in late 1996, the movement’s strategy changed substantially. It’s reflected the changing composition of the movement, including mass-membership groups such as Friends of the Earth (FoE), the British Soil Association, and Greenpeace. At least three new strategies were central to movement organizing after 1996. First, they used terms such as “genetic pollution,” “genetic contamination,” and “Frankenfoods” to describe GMOs. Second, targeting Monsanto with the campaign related to “the ugly American.” Third, the movement launched a major consumer campaign to stop using and selling GM foods. As a result, British citizens’ awareness of GM food increased markedly after 1996.

In contrast to Britain, Anti-GE movements/campaigns were much harder to pull off in the United States due to several reasons: First, the size of the sector, which comprised some 24,600 stores, compared to around 6,500 supermarkets in Britain. The four largest food retailers in the United States accounted for just over a quarter (27%) of grocery store sales, compared with over70% for the four most major retailers in Britain. Second, supermarkets in the United States were culturally predisposed to collaborate with the biotechnology industry and U.S. food manufacturers to fight activist campaigns for labeling GM products. Third, Americans are culturally predisposed to trust regulatory authorities, technology, and corporations far more readily than European citizens. Fourth, U.S. food culture has tended to be shaped by a preoccupation with price and convenience, rather than a concern with other qualities of food.

In my opinion, this article is one of the most comprehensive and holistic comparative studies of anti-GE movements. By “looking downstream,” “looking upstream,” and “looking across the Atlantic,” the authors explaining the logic and importance of cultural-economic cohesion very well, both theoretically and empirically. The full range of data source and critical thinking by discourse analysis on GCC organization is an important part of this comparative study. By understanding the cultural-economic cohesion, we can identify when the social movements targeting capital are likely to change their targets’ behavior.

original source:

Targeting Capital: A Cultural Economy Approach to Understanding the Efficacy of Two Anti–Genetic Engineering Movements

Rachel Schurman & William Munro