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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Bodies of evidence : poner el cuerpo, activism and scientific practice in a fumigated town Miranda, Daniela Belén

Abstract

Since the 1996 approval of genetically-modified seeds in Argentina, the rapid expansion of soybean farming transformed this country, which became the world’s third-largest producer of soy through the adoption of an agribusiness model based on the widespread use of genetically modified soybeans and herbicides, the most common of which is Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup. For more than two decades, many inhabitants of the affected communities have insisted that this intensive use of pesticides has created and still creates countless damaging consequences for the environment and human health. As a result, activism against fumigation has emerged in the country on the part of grassroots political and environmental organizations. Despite the multiplication of scientific studies demonstrating the disastrous consequences caused by these toxic exposures, the agricultural regions of Argentina seem to be ruled by a logic in which profit prevails over the local need for food sovereignty and a healthy environment, leaving Argentina today with the highest glyphosate application rate in the world. The Argentinian elites appeal to abstract ideas of “progress” and “development” to justify the use of agrichemicals, treating the scientists that support the communities’ claims as pariahs. Following a long and harmful tradition of complicity of the Argentinian State with extractivist projects, government officials align themselves with agribusiness interests in the shape of what Amalia Leguizamón calls “synergies of power”, that is, the cooperation between state agencies, the media, and scientists with corporate interests. Using ethnographic and qualitative research methods, I examine in this thesis how different actors in the central regions of Argentina, grassroots organizations, and environmental scientists, understand and advocate against the agribusiness model, drawing from their own bodily experiences and mobilizing scientific knowledge on the toxicity of glyphosate. I explore what are the conditions in which this intervention takes place against the structural and systemic violence of a model in which poison is, as Blois and Folguera put it, a state policy.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International