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CAON THE TRAIL OF LIVING MODIFIED ORGANISMS:Environmentalism within and against Neoliberal OrderTHOMAS PEARSONUniversity of WisconsinStout

On a windy afternoon, Ana Julia and Miguel led me down a residential

street away from the center of Canas, a small town in the Guanacaste province of

northwestern Costa Rica. After crossing a thin footbridge over the Canas River,

we approach lines of rusty barbed-wire fence that surround a field of genetically

modified (transgenic) cotton, planted and reproduced for export to the United

States. Notable for her small stature and curly dark hair, Ana Julia Arana Bolvarworks part time as a math tutor and dedicates her remaining energy to community

activism with the Canas Civic Committee (Comite Cvico de Canas, or CCC). She

hunches down and easily scoots between the wires, disappearing into the thicket

of tall foliage that lines the perimeter of the field. Miguel is next, bending over

and carefully moving his older and larger body between the barbed wires with

impressive agility. Also a member of the CCC, Miguel Angel Vasquez Vasquez is

retired, his battered hands speaking volumes about life as a rural worker.Scorching sun overhead, I negotiate myself through the wires and follow

their foot prints into the brush. When I catch up, Ana Julia gestures to where

Delta and Pine Land (D and PL), a multinational seed company now owned by

Monsanto, recently cultivated transgenic seeds. According to government biosafety

procedures, remaining plants are to be destroyed, generally by removing and

sometimesburning leftover plant material.Miguel pointsoutseveral plantsgrowing

amidsingedpatchesofthepreviousseasonscultivations.Theynotethediscrepancy,saying they will alert government biosafety officials. Since 2004, activists such as

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Vol. 24, Issue 4, pp. 712745. ISSN 0886-7356, online ISSN 1548-1360. C 2009 bythe American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.01045.x


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ON THE TRAIL OF LIVING MODIFIED ORGANISMS

Ana Julia and Miguel have periodically monitored D and PL activities as part of an

environmentalist campaign against transgenics.

Few paid much attention in the mid-1990s when D and PL opened a winter

nursery facility along the Inter-American Highway just outside Canas. Today D

and PL uses the facility and local fields to grow transgenic cotton and soybean

seeds for export. Most of the transgenic cotton seeds are Bollgard R and Roundup

Ready R varieties engineered to resist undesirable insects and certain herbicides.

The soybean seeds are a combination of Roundup Ready R and STS R, also designed

to resist herbicides. Although Costa Rica does not play a significant role in cotton

or soybean production, or have local industries that draw on such raw materials,

cotton and soy are two of the most important industrial crops in the world.

Accessible irrigation combined with a predictable dry season of hot weather andlong,sunnydays,givesCanas ideal conditions for counter-seasonproduction of both

conventional and transgenic seeds. Since the early 1990s, at least three companies

have maintained winter nursery operations that grow and multiply transgenic seeds

in the Guanacaste region.

On the trail of transgenic cotton, we walk back toward town, where Ana Julia

and Miguel show me several cotton bushes growing along neighborhood streets

and in the yards of homes. The strong Canas winds scatter locks of cotton overlong distances, and seeds cling to the clothes and boots of field workers. They ask

me to take photos, suspecting that the plants are also transgenic. Next we take

a cab to an abandoned field across the Inter-American Highway, where Miguel

and Ana Julia direct me to a cluster of bushes. Neglected and ragged, some have

orbs of dark, uncultivated cotton. Ana Julia and Miguel instruct me to take several

more pictures while they inspect the shabby plants and comment on new ones

sprouting up through dry, lumpy soil (see Figure 1). With a puzzled expression,Miguel looks up and asks, What do they call these plants? Ana Julia hesitates

with her response, carefully recalling the technical name assigned to these cases

by government biosafety authorities. She mutters, simply, accidental plantings

(siembras accidentales).

Through their participation in an environmentalist campaign against trans-

genics, Miguel and Ana Julia now negotiate the novel discourses and practices

associated with biosafety risk management. Despite official rhetoric, they prefer

to call these cases transgenic contamination, and also warn ofsiembras clandesti-

nas, or clandestine plants. They suspect some companies, burdened by biosafety

regulations, reproduce transgenic seeds without the approval of state biosafety

authorities. In response to activists monitoring efforts, officials now label Ana713


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CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY 24:4

FIGURE 1. Activists inspect accidental plantings of transgenic cotton, Canas, Guanacaste,2006. Photograph by the author.

Julia and Miguel bio-vigilantes. The term could be translated as biovigilante, but is

better understood as biowatchman or bioguard.1

The designation validates informalmonitoring of local fields, which activists undertake as part of their opposition to

transgenic seeds.

Internationally recognized as a biologically megadiverse country, Costa Rica

has also come to play a minor but noteworthy role in the reproduction of the

genetic information encoded in the seedinformation that is a vital raw mate-

rial for new global agro-biotech industries.2 Incorporation of biological life into

global circuits of capital and technoscience has not gone uncontested, however,giving rise to new forms of activism around biodiversity and biotechnology (Heller

and Escobar 2003). I accompanied environmental activists in Costa Rica during

fieldwork over a period of 18 months between 2006 and 2008, following their

campaign against transgenics. They oppose new agricultural biotechnologies on en-

vironmental, health, and political economic grounds, and have engaged biosafety

as part of a broader critique of the states inability to maintain social and biological

well-being in the neoliberal era. Activists have pressed for a moratorium on the

planting of transgenic seeds and advocate for the establishment of transgenic-free

zones as alternative forms of community biosafety.

Despite rejecting the official biosafety framework, activists have increased

their presence as representatives of civil society within biosafety risk management,714


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also participating on the national biosafety commission that reviews all requests to

plant transgenic seeds. In Latin America, notions of participation andempowerment

are closely tied to the expansion of neoliberalism, including the reduction of public

services and the decentralization of governmental functions based on principles of

market primacy and civic entrepreneurialism (Edelman 2005; Paley 2001). Lacking

resources to effectively implement biosafety regulations, the Costa Rican state has

turned to market mechanisms such as biosafety auditing, which requires seed

companies to hire private auditors to oversee biosafety practices. In this context, the

informal monitoring carried out by activists is increasingly viewed as a civil society

auditing service operating parallel to private auditors and subsidizing the lack of

state capacity in biosafety. This raises the following question: By adopting informal

monitoring practices and occupying spaces designated for civil society participation,do activists reinforce the neoliberal logics embedded in new governmental forms

concerned with the management of biological life?

This essay explores how global governance regimes, international environ-

mentalist campaigns, and situated historical conditions such as community activism

and new biotech industries converge and play out through biosafety monitoring.

Below I trace how activists such as Ana Julia and Miguel became involved in in-

formal biosafety monitoring, and how they envision themselves as civil societyactors in relation to state officials and D and PL. I then examine efforts by gov-

ernment biosafety officials to accommodate and shape civil society involvement

in decision making. Working with limited resources and a genuine concern to

manage the uncertain risks of agricultural biotechnology, biosafety officials draw

on strategies that position both the market and civil society as key mechanisms of

environmental governance. Last, we hear from biosafety auditors, and I compare

this entrepreneurial figure to the notion of the biovigilante to illustrate the chal-lenges activists face as they occupy and negotiate the civil society spaces opened

up through new international environmental governance regimes and ongoing, yet

inconsistent, processes of neoliberal state restructuring.

THE STATE AND NEOLIBERALISM IN COSTA RICA

Compared to other Central American countries, which have suffered from a history

of authoritarian rule, widespread political violence, and oppressive inequality, Costa Rica

has enjoyed relative political stability and solid democratic institutions since the 1950s.

Stemming from the redistributive character of a once-strong social-democratic state, Costa

Rica regularly boasts some of the highest development indicators (such as life expectancy,

715


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literacy rate, and per capita GDP) in the region (Sandbrook et al. 2007:9395). The

history of social democracy has deeply informed the strategies of civil society actors and

grassroots activists who have come to expect that the state constitutes a viable space of

struggle.

On the basis of his populist appeal, in 1940 Rafael Angel Calderon Guardia was elected

president amid growing fractures within the economic elite. Influenced by European social

reformism, Calderon broke with his own party to pursue progressive reforms and establish

a strategic alliance with the communist party. With support from the Catholic archbishop,

Calderon achieved lasting reforms, such as social security legislation, public health care,

retirement and disability pensions, a low-coast housing program, and the founding of the

University of Costa Rica. He also formalized existing workday and minimum-wage standards

as well as other social guarantees (Edelman and Kenen 1989:8389; Molina 2004:163

169).Elite discontent peaked during the disputed 1948 presidential election, and an insur-

rection led Jose Figueres Ferrer sparked a brief, but bloody, civil war. Figueres emerged

victorious, becoming the head of a ruling junta for 18 months. Although Figueres unleashed

repression of the defeated communists, organized labor, and Calderon supporters, he also

implemented his own vision of a social-democratic state, deepening the reform process and

initiating a major qualitative and quantitative escalation in the states involvement in the

economy and social welfare policy (Edelman 1999:55). Figueres nationalized the bank-

ing sector, seeking to diversify and modernize the economy, and left Calderons reformslargely untouched (Edelman and Kenen 1989:129). He also created other key features of the

Costa Rican welfare state: autonomous public-sector institutions; electoral oversight; and

the abolition of the military (Sandbrook et al. 2007:100101).

Also serving as president in 1953 and 1970, Figueres helped create the National

Liberation Party (Partido de Liberacion Nacional, or PLN), which has dominated Costa

Rican electoral politics since. Anticommunist and committed to capitalism, until the 1980s

the PLN promoted a strong, technocratic role for the state in managing social welfare and the

economy. Initially, the state sought to develop infrastructure, diversify the economy, and

create conditions favorable for private capital, including an educated and healthy labor force

(Edelman 1999:58). In the 1960s and 1970s, the state adopted an import-substitution model

of industrialization, but also expanded a growing range of social programs and subsidies.

The commitment to public welfare ensured the expansive reach of the state apparatus in

the everyday lives of Costa Ricans. The state also institutionalized a conciliatory response to

grassrootsprotest, displaying a tendency to absorb social tensions through the creation of new

public programs that partially address problems while simultaneously undercutting popular

collective mobilization (Edelman and Kenen 1989:132). Whenever conflict threatens,

Diego Palma argues, the Costa Rican state does not unleash repression, but simply createsanother autonomous institution which provides a little space. The state thus opens a channel

of apparent resolution, and institutionalizes the conflict in order to relieve pressure (Palma

1980:190; see also 1989:134).

716


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By 1980, the Costa Rican state had grown extensively, with government spending

fueling one of the highest levels of per capita foreign debt in the world. Amid an economic

downturn and sudden rise in unemploymentand poverty, Costa Rica became the first country

in theregion to cease payment on all of its international obligations, and the World Bank,IMF,

and U.S. government subsequently demanded reforms (Edelman and Kenen 1989:187).

Starting with structural adjustment loans and austerity measures, these reforms sought

to shrink the state bureaucracy and reduce government spending. Neoliberalism arrived

piecemeal as the Reagan administration intensified its brutal anticommunist campaigns in

Nicaragua and El Salvador. Development funds channeled through USAID became a crucial

tool for the Reagan administration in its efforts to undercut Costa Ricas social welfare model

and promote free market democracy.

The basic principles of a neoliberal Costa Rica were consolidated with the adoption

of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) in 2008. For years, CAFTAhad represented an impasse between elites who favored neoliberal reforms and citizens

committed to the benefits of welfare-state institutions (Sandbrook et al. 2007:95). As

CAFTA went into force regionally in 2005 and 2006, the Costa Rican congress failed to

approve the treaty and opposition grew, developing into a broad-based social movement.

Elected to his second term and intent on passing CAFTA, President Oscar Arias (1986

90; 200610) initiated a popular referendum in 2007. Ostensibly a democratic process, the

move also shifted theconflict over CAFTA to an electoral terrain, easily controlled by the PLN

party machine and its superior resources and influence over the media. Opponents organizedthrough hundreds of local Patriotic Committees (Comites Patrioticos), which implored

citizens to vote No to CAFTA. Ahead of the referendum, this mobilization generated huge

demonstrations, and the movement galvanized diverse sectors of the middle class who fought

to preserve the remaining vestiges of the social welfare state. CAFTA narrowly passed the

October 2007 referendum after an electoral process marred by fraud, illegal influence,

and ruling-party manipulation. Following the defeat, the anti-CAFTA movement and its

base of Patriotic Committees splintered, despite efforts to remobilize to stop the numerous

legislative changes required to implement CAFTA. Few activists immediately grasped the

impact the referendum had in legitimizing neoliberalism in mainstream public discourse:

The citizens have voted, it is now argued, with CAFTA democratically approved.

TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE

REGIMES

Costa Rican activists engage biosafety within a broader campaign against

transgenic seeds and foods, often adopting the technical language and monitoring

practices of risk management. During one notable moment, in February 2005 a

transnational network of environmental organizations staged simultaneous press

conferences across five countries to denounce the lack of biosafety regulation in

Central America. Organized as the Central American Alliance for Biodiversity717


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Protection (Alianza Centroamericana de Proteccion a la Biodiversidad), and with

support from Friends of the Earth International, over 70 organizations spent several

months gathering seed and grain samples from rural farm depots, urban markets,

and food aid shipments throughout the region. Groups in Costa Rica even slipped

their way onto a docked freighter packed with grain to pilfer test samples.

Activists brought the samples to laboratories at national universities in Costa

Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, and then processed them

with field test kits purchased from Genetic ID Inc., a GMO testing company

accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service.3 In most cases, such as

in Costa Rica, activists invited representatives from the office for the human rights

ombudsman to observe the process. Tests that detected transgenic material were

sent for confirmation to Genetic IDs laboratory in Fairfield, Iowa, which issueda PCR Analysis Report summarizing what GMOs were found. Unsurprisingly,

GMOs turned up in places where they should not have been. Although not produced

in or knowingly imported to the region, the tests also found traces of StarLink R,

a controversial GMO that had been approved as animal feed in the United States,

but not for human consumption.4

By forming their own biosafety monitoring alliances and mobilizing inter-

national expertise, activists successfully traced transgenic seeds entering CentralAmerica through unregulated shipments of seed, grain, and food aid from the

United States. At the press conferences they presented their findings and raised

questions about social well-being and biological life in a region transformed by

nearly two decades of neoliberal policies. Without strict biosafety safeguards, ac-

tivists maintained, trade in transgenic organisms would irreversibly contaminate

agricultural and biological diversity and threaten human health. They called for

Central American governments to ratify and implement the UN Cartagena Pro-tocol on Biosafety (hereafter, Biosafety Protocol), an international agreement that

outlines risk management norms to regulate the cross-border movement of living

modified organisms (Alianza Centroamericana de Proteccion a la Biodiversidad

2005).5

These alliances appeal to a concept of biosafety that originates within new

regimes of global environmental governance, including the UN Convention on

Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Biosafety Protocol, a subagreement on biotech-

nology products. The CBD was formed during the 1992 Earth Summit to promote

the global conservation of biodiversity, and marks an important turning point in

the establishment of governance principles geared toward the management bio-

logical life on a planetary scale. For a number of anthropologists working from a718


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critical, political ecology perspective, the CBD represents a key institutional site

in the production of expertise about biodiversity (Escobar 1998; Ferradas 2004).

Biodiversity discourse is historically recent, first appearing in the late 1980s and in-

tensifying throughout the 1990s to convey contemporary preoccupations with the

survival of biological life on earth. As a technical discourse, biodiversity frames

nature in ways that authorize particular strategies of environmental conservation

while excluding others, positioning the global ecosystem and genetic resources

as both scales and objects of technocratic management (Escobar 1997; Franklin

et al. 2000:26). In this sense, the CBD and its Biosafety Protocol reflect historical

processes through which life itself has become an object of political concern (cf.

Franklin 2000, 2003; Hayden 2003:23; Rose 2001).

Rather than pursue biodiversity conservation at the expense of economicgrowth, the CBD promotes a view of conservation that is mediated by, if not

achieved through, economic markets (Hayden 2003:6366; McAfee 1999, 2003a,

2003c:204). Conservation of biodiversity is promoted through its economic use,

such as, for example, the prospecting of genetic resources for the creation of

new biotechnology products. By allowing access to the molecular components

of organisms and enabling their potential commercialization as pharmaceuticals,

transgenic products, or synthetic organisms, among others, new biotechnologiesare assumed to play a pivotal role in establishing future markets in biology

(Dorsey 2006; OConnor 1994). Such markets provide economic incentives for

conservation, with nature valued as a strategic resource to be managed through its

sustainable use.

One example of this logic of market environmentalism is the Costa Rican

National Biodiversity Institute (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad, or INBio),

founded in 1989 and known internationally for its controversial bioprospectingagreements with multinational corporations (Castree 2003). INBios vision has

been to create market mechanisms to promote biodiversity conservation, which,

according to critics such as Silvia Rodrguez Cervantes (1993), privatize nature and

national biodiversity resources. The current director of bioprospecting at INBio,

Ana Lorena Guevara, emphasizes that Costa Ricans should visualize biodiversity

as biological capital, there with numerous uses (Campos 2005:9). In this sense,

INBio, like the CBD, frames biological life as an object of both political management

and economic value, promoting a market-centered or neoliberal vision of nature

that is reinforced in other international institutions such as the WTO, the World

Bank, and regional free-trade agreements such as CAFTA (Castree 2008; McCarthy

2004).719


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From its inception in 1992, the CBD acknowledged that transgenic organisms

may put conservation efforts at risk, presenting unknown and irreversible hazards

to natural biodiversity. Following its ratification, discussions were soon started

in the mid-1990s to establish a global biosafety regime. Stretching well over

five years, the contentious negotiations reflect fundamental conflicts over how to

manage biological life, as both environmental form and commodity form. During

the negotiations, several parties within the CBD disagreed over the meaning of

biosafety risk, how to make decisions about those risks, and how to define the

objects of risk management. Large-scale producers of transgenic seedssuch as

the United States, Canada, and Argentinainitially opposed the idea of a global

biosafety regime. They argued that genetic engineering in agriculture presents few

if any uncontrollable hazards and that biosafety regulation would create barriers toeconomic trade.6

Parallel to the 1990s negotiations, widespread opposition to food biotechnol-

ogy surfaced, especially in Europe, which helped mobilize support for an interna-

tional biosafety system (Falkner 2002; Schurman and Munro 2003). Often led by

prominent international NGOs, this opposition effectively exploited civil society

access to the CBD. The Biosafety Protocol negotiations incorporated elements of

what David Hess (2007) calls epistemic modernization. Building on similar con-cepts such as ecological modernization (e.g., Rutherford 1999b) and reflexive

modernization (e.g., Beck 1992), Hess draws attention to how scientific and pol-

icy elites, in response to growing challenges to their authority as experts, open up

technoscientific agendas to the scrutiny, influence, and participation of users, pa-

tients, non-governmental organizations, social movements and other nonexperts

(Hess 2007:47). Organizations such as Greenpeace, Third World Network, and

Friends of the Earth International played an active role in the Biosafety Protocolnegotiations, participating as observers and providing expertise to delegates from

a variety of countries (Gale 2002:258). NGOs also held forums outside official ne-

gotiating sessions, organizing demonstrations to draw media attention to biosafety

issues.

Finally adopted in January 2000, the Biosafety Protocol entered into force

in September 2003 when 50 countries signed and ratified the agreement. The

Protocol frames biosafety as a tool of scientific risk management, a global effort

to track the transboundary movement of living modified organisms, meaning

their transfer, handling, and use across international borders. It also seeks to de-

velop and coordinate biosafety standards and expertise, monitoring and managing

the irreversible release of genetically engineered and biologically active agents720


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into the natural environment.7 One of the major successes of civil society ac-

tivism in the negotiations was the inclusion of a precautionary approach as a

baseline for risk management decision making.8 As a result, international NGOs

that advocate stricter regulation of transgenic products, such as Greenpeace and

the Third World Network, highlight the Biosafety Protocol as an important civil

society accomplishment (Gale 2002; Nijar 2002; cf. Buttel 2003:153, 156157;

Kloppenburg 2004:346; McAfee 2003b:210).

PARASTATES OF NATURE

Technical knowledge about environment, nature, and biological life in Costa Rica

has developed within a dramatic expansion of quasi-governmental, private institutions in

governmental roles. In the 1980s, USAID supported an informal web of private foundations,

institutions,and NGOs to administer foreign aid. Operating parallel to the state, these private

entities duplicated many public programs, undercutting state-centered development while

advancing neoliberal ideologies (Rodrguez Cervantes 1993:105; Shallat 1989:223). Part of

calculated policy efforts, USAID promoted the parallel state to weaken the public sector,

accelerating Costa Ricas embrace of neoliberalism [and] establishing showcase projects

that allegedly demonstrated the efficiency of private-sector initiative and the validity of a

conservative vision of civil society (Edelman 1999:78).

An explosive growth of environmental NGOs occurred in this context, with civilsociety imagined as a space for the operations of private capital and the management of

technical knowledge about the environment, breaking sharply with the technocratic role

traditionally held by the centralized welfare state (cf. Vivanco 2006). Although many such

NGOs were not directly related to USAID activities, this parastate model of civil society

saw numerous government officials become closely involved in establishing some the most

prominent private foundations under self-described missions of public service (Blanco

Lizano 2004:121). Amid the looming economic crisis in the late 1970s, for example,

conservationist leaders such as Mario Boza, the first director of Costa Ricas national parkssystem, helped establish the National Parks Foundation as a private, nonprofit foundation

to attract and manage international resources while sidestepping bureaucratic red tape

involved when the central government receives and uses donated funds (Boza 1993:241).

The Costa Rica-USA Foundation (CRUSA), created in 1996 when USAID formally ceased

its in-country activities, administers foreign aid in the areas of environment, science and

technology, education, and sustainable development. CRUSA has also funded efforts to

promote the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), funneling resources to the

Ministry of Foreign Trade.

The most well-known parastate environmental organization in Costa Rica is INBio.

One of the founders of INBio, eminent U.S. ecologist Daniel Janzen, marveled in 1991 at

INBios character as simultaneously not private, not government . . . a combination of state

and private worlds (Rodrguez Cervantes 1993:129130). This melding of state and private

721


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worlds allows INBio to operate by market principles but with access to public biodiversity

resources. INBio relies on what Rodrguez Cervantes calls an inter-locking directorate in

which many top executives or friends are also working or have contacts at different strategic

governmental and private agencies (1993:131).

Although international attention has focused on hyped-up bioprospecting contracts,

other activities, such as efforts to inventory Costa Ricas biodiversity and promote envi-

ronmental education, are equally significant for understanding INBios vision of neoliberal

nature. Creating an inventory of Costa Ricas vast biodiversity is an improbable undertaking

that requires substantial technological and financial resources. To facilitate this, INBio makes

use of what they call para-taxonomists. In the early 1990s, with support from USAID and

the World Bank, INBio trained hundreds of people living near conservation areas in basic

skills to identify, collect, and preserve samples of flora and fauna, later examined by INBio

taxonomists (Zeledon 2000:54). Although parataxonomy allows INBio to exploit the laborand knowledge of rural dwellers, it is also linked to the spread of bioliteracy. According

to INBio, bioliteracy leads the individual to comprehend biodiversity, to adopt an ethic of

respecting nature, and to assume their responsibility for the management and conservation

of all life forms (Zeledon 2000:104). INBio director Rodrigo Gamez Lobo commonly

articulates the importance of bioliteracy for fostering a new ethic of ecological citizenship.

LOCAL ACTIVISM AND EXPERTISE

After learning that transgenic seeds are produced in Canas, in 2004 the CCCincorporated biosafety into the range of social and environmental justice campaigns

they support. In addition to activism around water, mining, and pollution from the

burning of nearby sugarcane fields, they periodically attempt to track down cases of

transgenic contamination and denounce the lack of biosafety. They have developed

contacts with both Costa Rican and international organizations and especially with

authoritative figures such as local scientists, or even foreign anthropologists, who

might support and lend legitimacy to their activism. Through our walking tourof Canas, Ana Julia and Miguel sought to demonstrate how far transgenic cotton

travels and how little the government or private companies control the problem.

The CCC formed in the late-1990s, taking shape as a citizen rights group

through a series of community workshops organized by the national Defensora

de los Habitantes, the office of the human rights ombudsman. The Defensora is

an independent government institution charged with promoting the civil rights

and interests of Costa Ricans, with a specific goal of defending those rights against

the actions or in the absence of the public sector.9 The workshops were part of

a program to empower citizens and establish a network of Local Civil Defense

Committees (Comites Locales de la Defensa Civil), offered at a time when neolib-

eralism was reshaping the relationship between citizens and the state. As Ana Julia722


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recalled, the workshops focused on how to prepare formal documents, engage

local governments, and encourage citizen participation.

During the workshops held in Canas, the Defensora helped several people

mobilize opposition to a processing plant for a nearby tilapia fish farm. Miguel

participated in this early struggle, which addressed waste water that polluted lo-

cal rivers and ponds. With the aid of the Defensora, residents researched the

tilapia plant and its environmental impacts, forming a group initially named the

Local Defense Committee. After successfully forcing the plants closure, the Lo-

cal Defense Committee went through a period of transition and reemerged as

the Canas Civic Committee. They joined the Asociacion Confraternidad Gua-

nacasteca, a regional alliance that organizes numerous groups to address social and

environmental problems in Guanacaste, many related to the impacts of tourismdevelopment.

Collaboration with the Defensora and the CCCs eventual restructuring left

a lasting impression on local activists. Miguel often mentions that government

officials or private companies try to discredit the CCC, in his words, by dismissing

members as crazy, uninformed, or as communists. Attempts to discredit activists

are especially common in conflicts over expertise or risk, such as controversies

around transgenic seeds. Even in the technical domain of biosafety, however,Miguel asserts his right to denounce the government and private corporations,

saying that even though we are not experts, we are citizensthey are on our land,

in our communities. We go around everywhere, because we know that a citizen

has the right to denounce problems. One doesnt have to be a lawyer to denounce

problems, always and whenever they are telling the truth. Miguel even carries a

copy of the Costa Rican constitution, where he has circled in red ink the various

articles that guarantee his rights as a citizen.The CCC joined the national antitransgenic campaign in Costa Rica when

the issue first began to take shape on environmentalist agendas in 2004, several

years after the arrival of the D and PL winter nursery. Both formal and indirect

relationships maintained by the CCC with national environmental coalitions and

international activist networks connected them to the campaign. The regional

Asociacion Confraternidad Guanacasteca is part of the Costa Rican Federation for

the Conservation of Nature (Federacion Costarricense para la Conservacion de la

Naturaleza, or FECON), an alliance of organizations that include, among many

others, CoecoCeiba, the national chapter of Friends of the Earth International. With

support from the Central American Alliance for Biodiversity Protection, activists

from CoecoCeiba and their partner organizations began to position transgenics723


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as an environmental and health problem, as well as a threat to food sovereignty,

through a series of workshops and public forums.

Initial stages of the antitransgenic campaign involved substantial research to

understand the complex issue and to evaluate if and how it affected Costa Rica.

Activists learned that transgenic seeds had been produced in winter nurseries since

1991, and that local scientists at the University of Costa Rica were conducting

field trials with a transgenic rice variety. The CCC was invited to some of the

early forums, and Ana Julia and Miguel attended workshops hosted nearby by a

organization called Sol de Vida, located in the town Santa Barbara de Santa Cruz,

farther north in Guanacaste.10 Other activists were working closely with Sol de

Vida and local municipal council members to declare Santa Cruz a transgenic

free territory.11 The CCCs involvement in the antitransgenic campaign was alsofacilitated by the support of a German activist working through Gene-Ethical

Network (Gen-Ethisches Netzwerk, or GeN) and a professor at the National

University who is part of the Latin American Action Network on Pesticides and its

Alternatives (Red de Accion en Plaguicidas y sus Alternativas de America Latina,

or RAP-AL).

Through these national and international connections, the CCC gathered

information on D and PL and the production of transgenic seeds near Canas,eventually writing a steady stream of letters to the Biotechnology Program in the

Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (Ministro de Agricultura y Ganadera, or

MAG).12 Initially they requested information on the location of transgenic seed

plots, and then regularly wrote to denounce unknown risks and the lack of effective

biosafety measures they observed through local monitoring. In April 2006, the CCC

organized their own forum in Canas as part of an international day against GMOs.

At the conclusion of the forum, a group marched several blocks down the Inter-American Highway to stage a small protest outside the D and PL processing plant

(see Figure 2).

Immense tractor trailers and large tour buses rumbled dangerously close as

we walked in a straight line along the side of the highway to the D and PL facility.

As we arrived, workers emerged to monitor the demonstration with handheld

video cameras. A dozen activists displayed national and provincial flags and a large

bannerreadingInternationalDayofOppositiontoGMOs,Canas,8April2006,No

Transgenics. Standing along the Inter-American Highway, the group paused across

from the workers huddled on the other side of the fence, and then turned toward

the road to pose for photographs. Despite the inconsequential demonstration,

subsequent representations of the event have been framed in terms of community724


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FIGURE 2. Demonstration outside D and PL plant, Canas, Guanacaste, April 2006. Photographby the author.

activists symbolic claim to place and the defense of biological life against D and PL,

a manifestation of transnational capital and the global bioeconomy (e.g., Sprenger

2008:17).In just a few years, the antitransgenic campaign in Costa Rica successfully

established seven transgenic-free communities.13 Drawing on their evidence of

transgenic contamination and the unregulated flow of transgenics, in 2005 and

2006 the antitransgenic campaign also promoted an unsuccessful yet high-profile

proposal for a nationwide moratorium on all transgenic seeds. Following a decade

of little or no public discussion of agricultural biotechnology as a political issue, the

relatively sudden mobilization of an antitransgenic campaign grounded in claimsto alternative, counterexpertise, drew the attention of government officials and

the seed companies. The MAG began to hold public forums to engage civil society

concerns, drawing support and funding from a UN program to develop a national

biosafety framework.14

Ana Julia reflected on developments around transgenics one morning as I sat

with her in the backyard of her old, ramshackle house in Canas, which seemed

to have more stacks of papers and files associated with CCC work than usable

furniture. She insisted that I lie in a hammock shaded by a mango tree, while she

found a comfortable seat on the leafy ground. Describing an early encounter with

government officials, Ana Julia recounted that we did this research work, and then

went there to a, to a confrontation, the civil society and everything. I asked who,725


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specifically: Um, representatives of the civil society, experts and all that, and the

office of the State Phytosanitary Service, to confront each other. Pointing to a stack

of photographs of accidental plantings and other alleged biosafety problems, Ana

Julia emphasized that they attended the forum to speak out against transgenics,

bolstered by the support of the national campaign and their links to transnational

environmentalist networks. They attended to speak out and present their photos

of biosafety anomalies, affirmed Ana Julia, not merely to be informed about the

situation by government experts.

Emphasis on photographs suggests a new way of visualizing and objectifying

transgenic plants as a potential biological hazard. A transgenic plant is indistinguish-

able from a conventional plant, except by genetic testing, so I asked Ana Julia how

a photograph could provide sufficient evidence of an accidental planting or that agiven field was planted with transgenic seeds. Ah, she started, because photos

are taken where the company vehicles arrive, for example, where they arrive

with the logos. She showed me several photographs, illustrating that by logos she

meant the labels required in fields and during transport to distinguish transgenic

from conventional seeds. Such labels commonly feature company logos. We dont

go like this, mocked Ana Julia, Um, Where are you from? No. Since, to handle

it strategically, is how to get the information, right. Such photos accompaniedothers, like the ones they asked me to take of transgenic cotton plants growing

along the sides of streets and in abandoned fields.

In response to the CCCs monitoring efforts, between May and June 2005 of-

ficials from the MAG Biotechnology Program visited Canas several times to sample

and destroy the various cotton bushes identified by Ana Julia and Miguel. Genetic

testing conducted by the government confirmed that the majority of the plants were

indeed transgenic. Like Ana Julias photographs, government-sanctioned genetictesting and the lab reports it produces also constitutes representations of transgenic

material, but in contrast to the photos produced by activists, these representations

are authorized by official science and expertise. During their participation at public

events, Ana Julia and Miguel now juxtapose their photographs of plants with copies

of such official documentation and with photos of MAG officials taking samples to

be tested in labs. In this way, they link their informal monitoring and picture taking

to the 2005 government test results and official expertise, as well as to the GMO

testing conducted by the Central American Alliance.

Viewing herself as confronting the government and corporations, Ana Julia

maintains that such results demonstrate how the situation is managed here. Que,

diay,15 she continued, exacerbated, it was pure lies; it was harmful! Diay, s,726


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there are even the tests, right. When the laboratory tests were done, they proved

that . . . that those outbreaks are transgenic, and that, diay, that they are taking

advantage of the fields of Guanacaste!

NATIONAL ORGANIZATION AND CIVIL SOCIETY

Government biosafety officials have responded to the antitransgenic campaign

by taking note of activists concerns and voices. One official from the National Seed

Office explained that, as government regulators, they do not consider, as some

feel or predict, that [biotechnology] is going to save humanity, or that its what is

going to feed the world. No, never. But we try to see the matter from an objective

perspective. She went on:

Those opposed to transgenics have been important in the development of

[biosafety] norms. . . . They have been very alert regarding problems, for

whatever situation that is considered irregular. And this has helped to find

ways to improve the biosafety system. It isI see it as a necessity that there

is opposition to transgenics. We dont promote transgenics either. It doesnt

interest us to promote them. . . . We believe that we have to strengthen the

biosafety system in the country; that we have to correctly evaluate the risks

and benefits, and make smart decisions.

As regulators, they claim not to promote or oppose transgenics, but, rather, aim to

weigh the costs and benefits of a given project and manage associated risks. Within

this process, biosafety officials have opened themselves to civil society criticisms

and feedback, officially encouraging participation. Such participation, however,

also has limits, illustrated by a conflict that unfolded when activists gained access

to the decision making process itself.A central component of the biosafety structure is the National Technical Com-

mission on Biosafety (Comision Tecnica Nacional de Bioseguridad, or CTNBio),

which reviews all proposals to work with transgenic organisms in Costa Rican terri-

tory. The CTNBio plays an advisory role and makes recommendations on whether

or not the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) should approve transgenic

organisms. Most requests are to reproduce and multiply transgenic seeds in winter

nurseries, but the University of Costa Rica has also conducted field trials with

transgenic rice and other companies have experimented with transgenic banana,

plantain, and pineapple. Any request to plant, import, or move transgenic varieties

must be reviewed and approved by the commission. As a technical review board,

experts from various government ministries and representatives designated by the727


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National Academy of Sciences compose the CTNBio. It was hastily established in

1991 when the initial requests were made to breed transgenic soy as a counter

season service for export, and then formalized in 1997 (Phytosanitary Protection

Law, MAG Law No. 7644).

In July 2004, then president of Costa Rica, Abel Pacheco, modified the

CTNBio by executive order to include two civil society members, represented

by FECON and a well-established group called the Biodiversity Coordination

Network (Red de Coordinacion en Biodiversidad). The change represented a

minor victory for the antitransgenic campaign, frustrating some biosafety officials.

One government member of the CTNBio explained:

Here in Costa Rica there is a strong movement against everything having to

do with bio-modified organisms, right. In the national technical commission

the issue has always been dealt with from a very technical point of view,

very technical. The environmentalist groups were able to incorporate them-

selves through their movement . . . well . . . lets say, maybe with a little bit of

political power.

As this official alludes, some saw the modification of the CTNBio as an example

of political nepotism, mainly because one of the leaders of the antitransgeniccampaign at that time was Fabian Pacheco, son of President Abel Pacheco. In

2004, Fabian Pachecos organization, the Social Ecology Association (Asociacion

de Ecologa Social, or AESO), served as one of the Costa Rican focal points in the

Central American Alliance for Biodiversity Protection. Because of his minor fame

as the son of the president, he was singled out by the media and quickly became a

recognizable face in the campaign for a moratorium on transgenic seeds.

Some CTNBio officials felt this injected politics into a technical review board.It was a surprise, said one official when they learned of the change:

The commissionworks ona very technical level,right, in which there is nothing

to favor some private company. It is solely an organization to provide technical

assistance in decision making by the department of biotechnology. Thus, even

they [environmentalists], I think, having now involved themselves, understand

[that it addresses] purely technical questions. I think that, at one time it was

very surprising, right, but I believe that they themselves [environmentalists]have understood that the matter is purely a technical issue.

These biosafety officials, positioning themselves as neutral experts, expressed

surprise by the inclusion of civil society participation in the actual decision-making728


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process, especially two groups that openly oppose transgenics. However, President

Pachecos move was not, historically speaking, unusual, particularly in light of

the states tendency to facilitate a channel of apparent resolution when faced

with potential conflict, institutionalizing oppositional perspectives generated by

grassroots activism (Palma 1980:190).

With civil society formally represented on the CTNBio, some officials

immediately moved to limit the roles of civil society members or have particular

representatives banned completely. In September 2005, the president of the

CTNBio refused to provide civil society representatives information about two

requests by D and PL to grow new varieties of transgenic cotton. D and PL

representatives and CTNBio officials argued that through their public opposition to

transgenics, these particular civil society representatives had forfeited their neutral-ity and could not objectively evaluate requests to plant transgenics. D and PL cited

newspaper reports that quoted Fabian Pacheco stating that activists were ready to

destroy transgenic cultivations if a moratorium were not adopted: Were ground-

ing the [proposed] moratorium in a process of resistance. Were ready to destroy

cultivations if necessary, said Pacheco. I personally am not going to be opposed

to communities exercising their right to biosafety defense (Poncher 2004b).

The Biodiversity Coordination Network and FECON accused officials ofdenying their constitutional rights as members of the CTNBio, and mounted an

unsuccessful legal challenge.16 In addition to withholding information from civil

society, some officials have also maintained that the Biodiversity Coordination

Network has no legal right to participate on the CTNBio. They argue that the

Network is not legally registered as an NGO, and thus is informal and illegitimate.

They have at times refused to recognize the Biodiversity Coordination Network,

pressuring them to remove their representative from the CTNBio.This conflict demonstrates how government officials work to control the

terms of civil society participation, invoking distinctions between the technical

and the political to locate opponents to transgenics in the domain of the political.

Civil society is encouraged, but officials define this participation as NGOs that

are included and consulted on a superficial level. Such consultation is expected

to facilitate interaction between government institutions and the public, enabling

the flow of information and the promotion of public awareness, resulting in

positive public perception of science and technology. Civil society consultation,

for example, often entails an open forum or workshop, or some other one-way

delivery of information through radio or brochures, which situates the public as a

passive recipient of established knowledge and policy.729


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The passive role assigned to civil society is also illustrated by biosafety policy

documents, one of which explains that the goal of engaging civil society is to

achieve responsible and objective public participation, offering information and

free expression to civil society, through both the mass media and the participation

of organizations, groups, and/or associations interested and involved in the issues of

biosafety, modern biotechnology, and so on (Desarrollos Logsticos y Publicitarios

S.A. 2004). The document defines legitimate participation as responsible and

objective. When activists oppose transgenics, officials commonly describe such

opposition as either uninformed or uneducated (even worse, irrational), or

as politically and ideologically motivated. At a public forum I attended in 2006,

for instance, one scientist argued that biosafety is a key word that plays into the

hands of those who, for ideological reasons, oppose biotech food. He called theseopponents ecoterrorists.

Grounded in assumed divisions between science and society, such boundary-

maintenance characterizes many discussions of environmentalism and techno-

science (Jamison 1996:236239; Renfrew 2009). It is not surprising that some

officials responded with resentment and frustration to the unexpected inclusion of

civil society within the decision-making process of the CTNBio, leading to legal

conflicts and efforts to restrict access to information. But such conflicts and the veryinclusion of civil society within the institutional biosafety process allow officials to

clarify and reinscribe boundaries between technical expert and environmental

activist.

One official expressed ambivalence about civil society, saying at least for me,

it doesnt bother me that they are there. I just dont know what their objective

is. Although participation on the CTNBio is sometimes framed as a victory for

the antitransgenic campaign or as an example of democratic openness, activistshave also bluntly declared that their objective is strategic: to access technical

information and know what new varieties are introduced (Poncher 2004a). Ac-

tivists such as Fabian Pacheco maintain that the concept of biosafety legitimizes

a regulatory framework that merely facilitates the use of transgenic seeds. He

views biosafety as a term that corporate and governmental sectors try to use

in the function of introducing and legalizing transgenic organisms, arguing that

the only genuine biosafety is to completely prohibit transgenics (Pacheco 2006).

Nevertheless, Pacheco became one of two civil society representatives once the

presidential order altered the CTNBio, intending to exploit the new spaces cre-

ated to accommodate civil society grievances and challenges to governmental

authority.730


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FIGURING THE BIOVIGILANTE AND THE BIOSAFETY AUDITOR

Efforts by officials to shape the terms and practices available to civil society

actors within risk management are not limited to the CTNBio. In the wake of the

informal monitoring pursued as part of the antitransgenic campaign, government

officials call activists such as Ana Julia and Miguel biovigilantes. By 2005, officials

began making reference to biovigilancia in correspondence with the CCC and at pub-

lic forums. The director of the government Biotechnology Program explained that

we count on the active participation of representatives from Non-Governmental

Organizations located especially in zones where GMOs are cultivated; [representa-

tives] who keep official personnel informed of any abnormality that is present and

who form part of measures taken to mitigate risks (letter to activists, September

5, 2005). It was not long before the term developed from a casual reference to aformal element in the policy framework. At one public forum, an official identified

bio-vigilancia comunitaria (community biovigilance) as a strategy in the monitoring

of transgenic fields, along with monitoring by the National Seed Office and pri-

vate biosafety auditors. Recent policy also includes articles that call for promoting

biovigilancia comunitaria and responsible citizen participation in biosafety (MAG

2006).

Framing civil society participation as biovigilancia occurred in parallel with thedevelopment of biosafety auditing as a market-oriented risk management tool.

The state lacks the resources and personnel to implement biosafety, partly because

of the current neoliberal climate that limits the money available for regulation

and discourages the growth of state bureaucracy. In response to the numerous

accidental plantings discovered by activists, in 2005 the Biotechnology Program

created agricultural biosafety auditing as a regulatory mechanism (MAG 2005).

Biosafety auditors are private businesses contracted to supervise companies orresearch institutes granted permission to work with transgenic organisms.

The experience of one biosafety auditor, a 25-year-old man named Rodolfo

Umana, typifies this turn to market mechanisms in biosafety, particularly how

principles of competition and financial accountability have been embedded within

biosafety risk management. Rodolfo is a young businessman, and when I arranged

to interview him he offered to pick me up and drive to an upscale shopping mall

in a wealthy neighborhood of San Jose. We parked in the underground garage and

took the escalator up to the main commercial floor, heading directly to a trendy

cafe where a big-screen TV showed World Cup soccer matches.

The cafe was crowded and the noisy grind of an espresso machine filled

the room as Rodolfo explained how he had recently graduated from a technical731


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and [making sure] that everything is done right. And for them [the state] it

allows them to have greater control over what is happening. Because they

can . . . eventually, lets sayimportant things appearand they, they also

make these auditing visits too. But its not the same. They dont have the

capacity to be able to be, right, in everything and at every moment. From

there is where the figure of the auditor was born.

Use of audit in biosafety suggests that the management of risks are no longer the

dark side of opportunities, they are also market opportunities (Beck 1992:46). A

private enterprise pays another private enterprise to oversee its risk management

practices, establishing a market for biosafety and a chain of accountability leading

through private entities and back to the state. We supervise as the eyes of the

government, asserted Rodolfo, in each company.

Withtheexpansionofmarketideologies,theaudithasbecomeahighlymobile

cultural form of accountability, ethics, and self-checking (Strathern 2000:282).

Audit has expanded from its traditional functions in finance to other domains,

bringing a certain style of processing risk that enable industries to regulate

themselves (Power 1997:138). According to Power (1997:14), the growth of

audit marks a distinctive, if unevenly distributed, phase in the development of

advanced economic systems as they grapple with the production of risks, the erosion

of social trust, fiscal crisis, and the need for controlall under the umbrella of

accountability. In the case of biosafety, this style of managing myriad socially

produced risks is likened to quality control. With all services in the area of quality

control, said one biosafety auditor explicitly, its the same. That is, lets say you

are contracting an external company that you let audit your quality control system,

right. But you are paying them. Its the same, the same auditing concept functions

for everything.Although audit provides a means for establishing biosafety accountability, the

use of a market mechanism for doing so has been criticized by activists in the

antitransgenic campaign who rarely see the market and profit motive as equitable

arbiters of public wellbeing. They question the neutrality of one private company

to monitor and regulate another. In Rodolfos case, for instance, he works closely

with his clients, often allowing professional and personal relationships to blur.

Rodolfo reports to thestates Biotechnology Program, butwasinterviewed,chosen,contracted, and is paid directly by the companies he audits. When he travels long

distances to outlying rural areas, he often shares meals with company owners or

stays the night at their homes to save on lodging and travel costs.

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When I asked Rodolfo about a potential conflict of interest, he agreed that it

could be problematic. He assured me, however, that biosafety auditors maintain

high ethical standards, which prevents abuses from occurring. The question about

the system, he explained, is that we are the eyes of the government, to say it

like that, but the company we are auditing is who pays us. With that, I believe,

that is more than anything the responsibility of the auditors and the professional

ethics that one has. From Rodolfos perspective, the ability of the audit to assure

effective risk management, and not merely quality control, centers on the personal

responsibility and ethics of the auditor.

The auditor as ethical figure stands parallel with the biovigilante, two actors in

official Costa Rican biosafety discourse that point to a dynamic of subject formation.

Rodolfo voluntarily raised this comparison when discussing the effectiveness ofauditing, suggesting that biovigilancia comunitaria contributes more to biosafety

than activists such as Ana Julia and Miguel care to acknowledge. For me, said

Rodolfo of biosafety auditing:

The requirement has been an advantage in the entire system because it permits

having better control over the activities with transgenic organisms in Costa

Rica. If it didnt exist then it [the system] wouldnt have the controls it has

now. And its something that maybe the environmentalists and these groups

are not going to want to recognize: The Ministry [of Agriculture] does not have

the capacity to conduct [biosafety] control . . . it just cant. So what happens?

These groups are the, the, um, they are the bestthey are the auditors. How

is it said? The free auditors, to say it like that. Because they go around looking

out for scandalous things and then whatever little thing, they are going to call

the Ministry. They are the best . . . auditors, civil auditors, they say, the best

civil auditors they have.

Rodolfos observation suggests that government officials increasingly view informal

monitoring by activists as a free service, subsidizing the lack of capacity in the

management of biological life. When I asked Rodolfo his opinion about activists,

however, he scoffed that they are getting paid more than I am to spread fear among

simple-minded rural people. Questioning their motivation, Rodolfo alleged that

activists receive foreign funding from European NGOs to oppose transgenics.

Rodolfo challenges biovigilantes as ethical subjects, saying they are motivated more

by access to money than by the selfless goal of biosafety. Noting that biosafety

auditors are private companies ultimately motivated by profit, this is the same

critique that activists make of the biosafety audit mechanism.734


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ACTIVISM WITHIN AND AGAINST NEOLIBERAL ORDER

It is fitting to conclude where this essay began, on the trail of transgenic cotton

with Ana Julia and Miguel. Walking through the dusty streets of Canas one day, I

ask Miguel if he is proud to be a biovigilante. He scoffs at the suggestion, saying that

the government simply wants to co-opt activists through official-sounding labels.

Ana Julia, listening to our conversation, laughs and mocks my question: Yea, they

gave us the nickname bio-vigilante, since we go around where we see whatever

number of transgenic plants. She then becomes serious: The problem was the

super-weeds that they started to detect, right. Thus, ah, theyre the bio-vigilantes,

she emphasizes sarcastically, suggesting that biosafety officials began to welcome

informal monitoring once the situation seemed beyond their control. So they gave

us that nickname. I ask Miguel and Ana Julia if, in their view, they collaborate withthe government as biovigilantes. Miguel forcefully clarifies: No! What we do is

denounce the situation! He insists, in other words, that I interpret such monitoring

as their effort to defend Canas against the exploitation of transnational corporations

and complicit government officials. Ana Julia then goes on to describe biosafety

officials as paternalistic actors who seek to both use and manage potentially

disruptive activists. That is a way of saying, she explains, switching to a sarcastic

tone, fine, that, hey, continue working, they say, in order to help us.Following Ana Julia and Miguel, I argue that it is misleading and simplistic

to conclude that the biosafety system in Costa Rica simply co-opts environmental

activists. My argument responds to prior analyses that draw out how neoliberal

emphasis on participation and empowerment can have depoliticizing tendencies. As

David Hess notes in his discussion of epistemic modernization, for example, such

processes could be viewed as little more than a strategy to colonize lay knowledge,

co-opt civil society challengers, and quell internal dissidents and reform efforts(2007:67). Arun Agrawal (2005:162) describes how environmental governance

initiatives promote novel ways of understanding nature and environment, often

with an explicit intention to produce new environmental subjects, shaping the

imagination and conduct of people who care about the environment. Such re-

search draws on the extensive literature on neoliberal governmentality to develop

concepts such as environmentality (Agrawal 2005; Luke 1995) and ecological

governmentality (Rutherford 1999a), analyzing how people invest themselves in

dominant environmental thinking and enact processes of subject formation that

buttress broader governmental logics and relations of power (cf. Heller 2007:605

607).18

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Along these lines, Phillips and Ilcan (2007) examine how international in-

stitutions such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UN

Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) seek to expand

biotechnology knowledge and education in Latin America. Phillips and Ilcan cri-

tique such initiatives as new modalities of global governance, and analyze how

notions of participation and responsibility are deployed to encourage certain forms

of conduct and self-discipline among officially sanctioned responsible experts, the

new moral subjects. According to Phillips and Ilcan, civil society participation

in biotech policy decision making does not constitute a democratic or grassroots

struggle, but instead demonstrates how hegemonic power can act through local

subjects to reproduce a dominant modality of governance.

Such analyses, emphasizing the disciplinary capacity of neoliberalism, draw outimportant trends and problems. They dont, however, fully contain what happens

at the level of practice, where oppositional activists work within and against neolib-

eral order, appropriating dominant discourses and putting them to use in disruptive

ways. Hale (2002:497) similarly criticizes the literature on neoliberal governmen-

tality for an overemphasis on subject formation that posits a suspiciously seamless

link between what powerful institutions need or want, and what they get. Follow-

ing Hale, I want to emphasize the self-consciousness and reflexivity of many op-positional activists who critique key concepts and practicessuch as biosafety and

civil society empowermenteven as they work within officially designated roles.

In Latin America, as elsewhere, new modalities of governance take shape on

historically sedimented fields of discourse and action. Since the 1980s,expansions of

the market have synergized with expansions in civil society, as many anthropologists

have documented (Gill 2000:135142; Goldstein 2004:30; Paley 2001; Schild

1998). Costa Rica, despite its distinctiveness, has been no exception. But CostaRica has also come into neoliberalism with the cultural legacies of social democracy.

Many state actorseven the state as a wholeare attuned to social welfare,

even if they have insufficient resources to adequately protect it. The way they enlist

biovigilantes and biosafety auditors in the service of the state suggests this, even

while also demonstrating the long-established Costa Rican way of handling dissent

(through incorporation).

Entrepreneurialism animates the figure of the biosafety auditor, who is charged

with both quality control standards demanded by industry and the risk management

expectations of the state. Clearly, however, auditors such as Rodolfo recognize

inherent limitations in a market-based biosafety mechanism, a recognition moti-

vating his uneasy acceptance of the informal monitoring carried out by so-called736


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civil auditors. In line with government officials, Rodolfo views the biovigilante as

a potentially necessary, if unpredictable, actor in a biosafety system that all agree

should maintain public well-being. The reliance on ethical actors, however, gener-

ates a conflict not only over the efficacy of biosafety policy, but over the character

and content of new subject positions such as the biosafety auditor and biovigilante.

Finally, and critical to my argument here, is the sense of entitlement with

which figures like Miguel and Ana Julia approach the state. Miguel carries a copy

of the constitution in his back pocket. The opportunity to participate in decisions

affecting the welfare of his community and the nation is a long-standing expectation

rooted in cultural formations that took shape long before neoliberal order took

hold. Miguel and other activists are quite aware that times have indeed changed,

and leverage this as well. They are shaped by Costa Rican history, and also bycontemporary critiques of what Costa Rica has become: A critique surfacing from

experiences in their communities and from what is talked about within national

and transnational environmental campaigns. Miguel and Ana Julia are set up by

neoliberal order, but it certainly doesnt capture all that they do or the way they

think about the world.

What then, do we make of the ways some Costa Rican activists have become

biovigilantes, occupying spaces designated for civil society participation withinneoliberal order? It is inadequate to describe them as fully co-opted and colo-

nized. Governance in practice is more complicated, and the shifting, often strategic

and highly reflexive roles of civil society actors in specific historical and cultural

contexts of neoliberal order needs to be respected and cultivated. Analyses de-

scribing the nested systems that civil society actors work within, and sometimes

against, better serve both their efforts, as well as anthropological efforts to under-

stand neoliberalism in motion, dominant in particular times and places, but nevermonolithic.

ABSTRACT

Environmental governance regimes concerned with the management of biological life

have encouraged not only new forms of expertise, but also political activism and struggle.

One such regime, the international Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (Biosafety Protocol),

a subagreement of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), seeks to monitor the

potential risks of releasing living modified organisms, such as transgenic seeds, into theenvironment. Drawing on market-orientedvisions of environmental conservation and risk

management, the Biosafety Protocol is closely tied to thedevelopment of newbioeconomies

and the ascent of neoliberal principles globally. NGOs and environmentalists have

played prominent roles in the Biosafety Protocol by occupying spaces designated for737


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civil society participation, raising the question of how activists both disrupt and sustain

the neoliberal logics embedded in new regimes of environmental governance. I explore

this question through ethnographic research in Costa Rica among activists, biosafety

officials, and private biosafety auditors, where activists have engaged biosafety as part

of a campaign against transgenic seeds. Working with limited resources and a genuineconcern to manage the risks of agricultural biotechnology, officials draw on strategies

that position both the market and civil society as key mechanisms of biosafety monitoring.

Despite opposing transgenics and the concept of biosafety, activists participate in the

government biosafety commission as civil society representatives and informally monitor

local fields. Officials have labeled activists biovigilantes, viewing them as parallel

to private biosafety auditors who subsidize the lack of state capacity in biosafety.

Recent research on civil society and governance suggests that discourses of participation

have depoliticizing impacts, encouraging specific forms of self-conduct that reinforce a

dominant order of things. Illustrating how activists occupy and negotiate civil society

and biosafety expertise, I argue by contrast that their engagement with biosafety is

uneven and contradictory, revealing an unsettled struggle, rather than some prevailing

governmental logic.

Keywords: biosafety, activism, environmentalism, civil society, Costa Rica,

neoliberalism

NOTESAcknowledgments. I am indebted to Ana Julia Arana, Miguel A. Vasquez, and the Comite

Cvico de Canas, as well as to Jaime Garca, Silvia Rodrguez, Fabian Pacheco, and the many peopleassociated with the Red de Coordinacion en Biodiversidad for supporting my research in Costa Rica.Preliminary fieldwork was enabled by a grant from the Latin American and Caribbean Area Studiesprogram at the State University of New York, Binghamton, with funds from the Tinker Foundation. Adissertation fieldwork grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research fundedsustained fieldwork. My participation on the Rappaport Student Panel hosted by the Anthropologyand Environment Section at the American Anthropology Association annual meeting in 2006 was animportant springboard for developing this essay, and I thank the panel organizers. Early versions also

benefited from feedback at the State University of New York, Binghamton, through workshops in theAnthropology Department and through the Harpur College Deans Workshop on the Social Studyof Science, organized by Gerald Kutcher and Richard Lee. I would like to thank Carmen Ferradas,Deborah Elliston, Doug Holmes, and Dan Renfrew for their feedback and support at various stagesof research and writing. Mike Fortun and Kim Fortun provided invaluable editorial guidance andencouragement. I also thank the anonymous reviewers ofCA for their close reading of this essay andconstructive criticism. Remaining errors are my own responsibility.

1. The Spanish verb vigilartranslates as to watch over, keep an eye on, or supervise, and inmany parts of Central America private or neighborhood security guards are called vigilantes.

Insuchcases vigilardoes not carry thesame renegade connotations as theEnglish word vigilante,which is often applied to self-appointed justice seekers who feel official law enforcement isinadequate (as in the phrase vigilante justice).

2. For a history of the transformation of seeds and germplasm into commodity forms, seeKloppenburg 2004. His work has been very influential among some environmentalists inCosta Rica, particularly sociologist and activist Rodrguez Cervantes (1993).

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3. I use the expressions GMO (genetically modified organism) and transgenic (transgenic organism)interchangeably. For the most part, I use the term transgenic, which is most common amongactivists and environmentalists in Central America.

4. StarLink is a maize variety genetically engineered with the Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) Cry9Cgene, drawn from a soil bacterium containing a protein that is lethal to certain insects when

eaten. Approval for human consumption was initially denied in the United States becauseof fears that the Cry9C protein could trigger allergic reactions. In September 2000, testsinitiated by NGOs showed that taco shells had traces of StarLink, findings that sparked apublic controversy and widespread recall of various brands of taco shells in the United States.StarLink was originally owned in the United States by Aventis CropScience, but Aventis soldits embattled agricultural biotech division to Bayer in 2002.

5. Government and institutional officials offered mixed responses to these demands and a rep-resentative from the World Food Programme (WFP), which oversees food aid to the region,declared that the issue of GM food is an old controversy in which the WFP is not going toenter (Friends of the Earth International 2005). In symbolic gestures, however, both the Cen-tral American Council of Human Rights Ombudsmen and the Central American Parliament

passed resolutions in support of biosafety.6. Although having fundamentally influenced the negotiation process, the United States has notsigned the Biosafety Protocol. The United States has signed, but not ratified, the CBD.

7. For a more detailed discussion of the negotiation process, see CBD 2003a and 2003b. See alsoBail et al. 2002 for firsthand accounts of the negotiations. For an analysis of how membersof the Expert Group of the Biosafety Protocol engage in boundary maintenance betweenscience and politics, see Gupta 2004. Kleinman and Kinchy (2007) examine debates oversocioeconomic regulation within the negotiations and their implications for our understandingof neoliberalism.

8. Precautionary thinking maintains that a lack of scientific evidence about the risks of a transgenicorganism does not mean they are safe. In other words, a government is not obligated to show

that a transgenic organism is unsafe to justify its rejection. By contrast, the U.S. governmentemploys a regulatory principle known as substantial equivalence, in which the safety of anew biotech food product, including transgenic seeds, is evaluated based on that productssimilarity to equivalent products already on the market.

9. The office of the Defensora was formally established in 1993, consolidating a number ofseparate state institutions that worked to ensure, for example, human rights, consumer rights,and prisoner rights.

10. One early event Ana Julia and Miguel still speak of included a visit by Percy Schmeiser, theCanadian farmer who Monsanto sued for patent infringement after transgenic canola turnedup in his farm field. He fought the case, arguing that his field had been contaminated and thathe, if fact, was the victim. Schmeiser has become an international symbol of small farmers

struggle against corporate agroindustry giants such as Monsanto.11. Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, was declared a transgenic free territory in November 2005.12. The Biotechnology Program (Programa de Biotecnologa) is part of the State Phytosanitary

Service (Servicio Fitosanitario del Estado), which is overseen by theMinistry of Agriculture andLivestock (Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadera, or MAG). MAGs Biotechnology Programdeals primarily with regulatory issues related to agricultural biotechnology and agricultural

biosafety, which to date includes only transgenic seeds and plants.13. To date, with the assistance of antitransgenic activists, seven local governments have passed

declarations that designate their towns as transgenic free territories. They are Paraso,Cartago (2005); Santa Cruz, Guanacaste (2005); Nicoya, Guanacaste (2006); San Isidro,Heredia (2007); Abangares, Guanacaste (2008); Talamanca, Limon (2008); and Moravia, San

Jose (2009).14. The program, titled Desarrollo de un Marco Nacional de Bioseguridad para Costa Rica [De-

velopment of a national biosafety framework for Costa Rica], was coordinated internationallyand funded by the UN Environmental Programme and the Global Environmental Facility. Itconstituted the first phase of a series of international efforts geared toward implementing theBiosafety Protocol.

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15. The word diay is used colloquially in Costa Rica in various ways, and is frequently usedas an interjection in the Guanacaste region. It translates roughly as the English interjectionwell.

16. Recurso de Amparo, Expediente No. 050119950007-CO. Sala Constitucional de la CorteSuprema de Justicia, San Jose, Costa Rica.

17. The names of this biosafety auditor and the private company have been altered.18. On the concept of governmentality see Foucault 1978:135159; 1991 and Burchell et al.1991. On analysis of governmentality and neoliberalism see Barry et al. 1996.

Editors Note: Cultural Anthropology has published a number of essays on environment andpolitics, including Marina Welkers Corporate Security Begins in the Community: Mining,the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia(2009), Joseph Mascos Mutant Ecologies: Radioactive Life in PostCold War New Mexico(2004), and Hanne Vebers The Salt of the Montana: Interpreting Indigenous Activism in theRain Forest (1998).Cultural Anthropologyhas also published essays on the political economy of Central America; seeDavid Pedersens The Storm We Call Dollars: Determining Value and Belief in El Salvadorand the United States (2002) and Marc Edelmans Landlords and the Devil: Class, Ethnic,and Gender Dimensions of Central American Peasant Narratives (1994).

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