Letras Verdes: Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Socioambientales (Oct 2014)
Struggles against the pillars of agribusiness in Argentina: GMOs, agrotoxics and CONABIA
Abstract
Provided with the contributions of the linguistic turn, our perspective conceives political theorizing as an intervention of the researcher in an intersubjective context in which a public issue is debated. We focus on those contexts in which the exercise and claim for rights against the consequences of agribusiness is thematized: diseases and deaths, siteclearances and evictions of indigenous and peasant communities, omission or complicit actions of the state institutions among other issues. We consider these diverse and sustained over time practices as struggles for recognition that put in tension the complacent “consensus of the commodities”, its concepts, practices, institutions and effects. We present the struggles against the pillars of agribusiness in Argentina: GMOs, pesticides and the National Commission on Agricultural Biotechnology (CONABIA). As a result of our research there are contributions that uncover the web of relationships impacted by agribusiness, the public problems generated and currently generates the technological innovation in this field, and the limits and possibilities for resolution. Also we offer glimpse into the structure, criteria and operation, also made invisible: the body of the official political system with responsibilities in this case in our country, the National Commission for Agricultural Technology (CONABIA).
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