ABSTRACT
The fascinating comparative research of the GMFuturos project, and the remarkable day’s discussion at the Royal Society of London that followed it, underlined both widely differentiated global contexts for these contested technologies and commonalities in the experience of engaging different communities. For whether we were learning about the vexed symbolic role of maize in Mexico, the rescinding of Bt brinjal authorisations in India, or the calling for reopening of debate on GMOs in Brazil, the voices we heard were plural, often disconnected and dissatisfied with the quality of extant public process and conversation. The project also illustrated the inadequacy of any public discussion of technology which attempts to restrict the terms of debate to the evaluation and minimisation of technological risk and the maximisation of reward. As related projects have found in the context of nanotechnology, fracking and other environmentally modifying technologies (Macnaghten 2010;Macnaghten and Szerszynski 2013), other concerns will always come into play. If these narratives are not allowed to appear explicitly within the process of consultation, then they will do so by proxy, driving the debate, but not answerable to it from their hidden position.
