| Social movements known as "anti-globalization" movements have taken Genetically Modified (GM) Food as a rallying point for wider critiques about multinational corporations and government accountability. Agricultural biotechnology organizations in science and private business promote GM food as a solution to current problems of malnutrition and hunger in developing countries as well as future scenarios of want. The ensuing controversy in the public sphere is analyzed by paying special attention to how discourse around GM food aims to legitimize universal, or, on the other hand, local and particular, forms of knowledge. A critical deconstruction of activist and corporate discourse, along with a content analysis of mainstream news coverage in the United States and the United Kingdom, shows that both GM food and globalization are problems of "intelligibility," and this dissertation raises questions about the news as an arena for the deliberation of increasingly global systems. |
