The British Genetically Modified Wheat Trials: Convicting pasts, clashing futures, and controversial presents.

Bardet (Mejri), Olfa and Hopkinson, Gillian (2018) The British Genetically Modified Wheat Trials: Convicting pasts, clashing futures, and controversial presents. In: 5th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, 2018-06-06 - 2018-06-08, Copenhagen Business School. (Unpublished)

Abstract

This paper draws primarily on the Market Studies literature on concerned markets, and the Sociology of Expectations in science and technology to scrutinise the nature of socio-technical controversies and hybrid debates. The empirical focus of the study is on the debate surrounding genetically modified (GM) food technologies examined through the particular case of the British (GM) wheat trials. The study investigates how actors formulate concerns based on past experiences and ‘imagined’ future scenarios in a context governed by uncertainty, in a way that sustains their projected states of the world. It looks at how the Past actually provides anchoring realms of representations to Future projections, assisting Present negotiations and providing credibility to actors’ arguments. The work contributes to our understanding of market controversies by underlining how actors make use of different interpretations of time and navigate through different time realms in a non-linear fashion to sustain their competing claims and help promote their own vision of the world.