Risky Discourses: The Politics of GM Foods

Risk is a category that has been filled by the contingency of history; it is a way of structuring reality and rendering it intelligible. In western societies, risk has traditionally been identified and defined by a phalanx of social institutions, which have constituted the dominant 'relations of definition' (Beck, 1995). Despite the expansion of 'expert' methods of risk assessment, in recent times, a series of cases of institutional mismanagement - the BSE crisis being the most notorious - have thrown into doubt the ability of expert systems to effectively identify and mitigate social risks. In the last decade, the hegemonic relations of risk definition have increasingly been challenged by a plethora of subaltern discourses, which have emerged from civil society. These discourses have forced an institutional reflexivity that acknowledges the need for greater participatory equality in risk characterisation. However, drawing on the ongoing debate about GM foods, we argue in this paper that there are particular technologies of government which limit the democratisation of risk definition in contemporary western society.