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Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

35:1 0021– 8308

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKJTSBJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour0021-8308© The Executive Management Committee/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005351Original ArticleGenetically Modified OrganismsPaula Castro and Isabel Gomes

Genetically Modified Organisms in the Portuguese

Press: thematization and anchoring

PAULA CASTRO AND ISABEL GOMES

Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Lisboa ABSTRACTThe main aim of this paper is to examine how the recent themata developments in Social Representations Theory can be linked with the classical process involved in the construction of social representations—anchoring—, as well as with the communicative modalities that are part of the theory since its inception. This was done through a study of the representation ofGMOs in the Portuguese press, taken as an opportunity for addressing the issues related to the role played by old categories in rendering new meanings and in establishing new categories.A further objective of the study, more applied in nature, was to explore whether the central characteristics of the representations of biotechnology in European countries were also present in Portugal.All articles that included the expressions Genetically Modified/Genetic Modification/Manipulation or Transgenics, were collected, in five Portuguese newspapers, during the years of 1999, 2000 and 2001. Content analysis of the 239 articles collected showed that their thematical organisation re-constitutes the Red/Green dichotomy found in most European countries. TheRed/health discussion is structured around such themata as health/disease, risk/safety, benefits/problems, and anchors in categories like science and progress. The nature /culture opposition emerges, in turn, in the Green/food discussion, which anchors on categories like ideology and employs Propaganda as a communicative modality—a set of indicators configuring amore polemic debate. The conclusions discuss the relevance of linking themata with anchoring and the importance of devising more fine-grained tools for the analysis of Diffusion.Key words: Social representations theory; genetically modified organisms; themata; anchoring; communicative modalities

INTRODUCTION

An examination of the impact of the three major technological innovations since World War II—nuclear power, information and communication technology and biotechnology — shows that, although technological innovation, in general, progresses rather smoothly through society, there are some innovations that progress more smoothly than other . . . Nuclear power, for instance, met with strong and loud contestation since the beginning. In contrast, it is hard to remember examples of controversy surrounding information and communication technologies (ICT). Whether the ultimate fate of biotechnology in the public sphere will resemble that of nuclear power or that of ICT is perhaps not yet totally clear, since the issue is not closed. As the anti-nuclear movement has shown, sometimes resistance to technology is fuelled by reservations regarding fundamental moral values ( Van der Pligt, 1985; Van den Daele, 1993; Wagner et al., 1998). Since biotechnology has been considered by the public a technology that is both risky and morally questionable (Bauer, 2002), its future is also dependent upon the way it is framed in the public debate.

Currently, however, as researchers in the area notice (Dahinden, 2002), not even the terminology of the field is totally established—biotechnology, genetic engineering, genetic modification, are still competing definitions “in what seems to be a complex game played for control of semantics in the public sphere” (Gaskell et al., 1998, pg. 8). Considering that “definitions are not just technical issues, but are a matter of framing for the purpose of opinion and attitude forma- tion and for regulation” (Bauer, 2002, pg. 97), what we seem, then, to have with biotechnology is a field where the battle “is being waged in the arena of language, as much as that of science” (Ogden, 2001, pg. 340). And it has to be added that the debate has been very intense and controversial, with very divergent evaluative positions, and involving very different interests, orientations and identities, with the various actors involved in it generally finding their way into the media ( Wagner, Kronberger & Seifert, 2002).

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

The biotechnology debate can thus be considered a good opportunity for examining the role played by language in fostering social change, and, more precisely, the role played by old categories in pushing new meanings and objects through society. And the press can be seen as a strategic place where to study both the “battle of words” being fought in the area, and the intertwined battle of contents and positions.

BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE BATTLE OF WORDS

The relevance of the biotechnology debate was perceived by several researchers that examined media coverage, public policy and public perceptions of biotechno- logy and Genetically Modified Organisms in EU countries (see Gaskell, Bauer & Durant, 1998; also Jesuíno et al., 2001; Bauer 2002; Dahinden, 2002; Liakopoulos, 2002; Kohring & Matthes, 2002; Wagner et al., 2002). This bulk of work shows that in most countries—France, Austria, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Sweden, namely—the moment of higher attention of the press to biotechnology were the years between 1995 and 1997

. It was also during these years that NGOs became increasingly involved in the debate and more broad based advisory groups were created (Liakopoulos, 2002).

However, it should not be overlooked that both the nature and the extent of public concern about modern biotechnology are very different in different parts of Europe (Bauer et al., 1998). For instance, while in Greece there was little public reaction at all, in Italy the major concern was with the ethical implications of human reproductive technologies and in the UK most public attention was given to genetically modified food (Bauer, Durant & Gaskell, 1998). In the UK press debate, moreover, the discussions incorporated a dichotomy—the Red/Green dichotomy—, that was latter successfully exported to other countries (Bauer, 2002). This dichotomy separates biomedical manipulations with impact on the health area—Red—, from genetically modified food and agricultural products—Green.

The dichotomy can also be found in the area of public perceptions, since Eurobarometer surveys show that, around the EU countries, the public is less supportive of Green than of Red products, with GM medicine receiving the more positive evaluations (CNADS-CES, 2000). Moreover, a comparison of the 1996 and the 1999 Eurobarometer surveys shows that the support for GM food decreased. Since the 1999 survey was undertaken after a phase of public debate, which was intense in several countries, this shift shows how the health and med- icine applications of genetic modification were somehow better shielded from contestation and controversy than the food and agricultural products.

It can be hypothesised, in line with the notion that a “battle of words” is being fought over biotechnology, that this shielding is an effect of the Red/Green separation itself, even if it is not to be deduced that the situation was “purposefully engineered by RED proponents” (Bauer, 2002, pg. 106). Nevertheless, the making

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of distinctions is a pre-condition for the different categories defined to acquire different status, and this particularisation mechanism (Billig, 1985) may have had protective effects over the health domain. At this point it can also be noted that the Green-Red dichotomy is an example of how “splitting” functions as a defence mechanism. Joffe (2003), applying this concept to the area of risk perception, argues that “the goal of splitting, manifest in representations, is to keep the bad away from the good in the hope that the good will not be invaded or destroyed” ( pg. 62). Although psychoanalysis locates these defence mechanisms in the mind, Billig (1999) has argued that they can also (or perhaps preferentially) be found in the uses of language. The categorisations and particularisations that language produces are among these uses, and the Red/Green dichotomy seems, in this sense, to clearly perform the task of splitting, by leaving one category with (almost) all the bad parts, and the other with the good ones, thus engendering repres- entations with the corresponding qualities.

Another way of looking at how the battle of language develops is by examining the metaphors employed to refer to biotechnology. In this respect, the Informa- tion Technology metaphor—anchoring biotechnology to IT by statements such as “people are programmed by their genes”—occupied the second place both in the ’80s and in the ’90s in the U.K. press (Liakopoulos, 2002). In face of the uncontested success of IT in the public sphere, this is not surprising, particularly if we accept that “language is a technology as any other” (Ogden, 2001, pg. 338). Indeed, a technology that has the fantastic capacity of rendering the new through old words, which lend their positive or negative qualities to the new target domain.

In sum, then, the point of the previous pages was to show that are several reasons for stating that an important part of the battle of biotechnology is being fought with words. This can be stated because the press is one of the privileged theatres where the battle is being staged, and where the various identities and positions can form in ranks. But this can also be stated because the way language is used, what distinctions are being made with and through it, how these distinctions are contested and defended, the functions they perform, which old categories are being chosen for carrying new meanings, all of these are crucial questions in this area. Indeed, all of these are crucial questions when we try to address the more general issue of how technological innovation progresses through society, or the even more general problem of how novelty relates to what is old. In other words, all of these are crucial questions when we try to understand how—in the well known terms of Moscovici (1976)—the unfamiliar becomes familiar, and the transformations it suffers in this process.

PORTUGAL—THE CENTRALITY OF THE PRESS FOR THE BATTLE OF WORDS

That the press plays a central role in the “thinking society” dynamic and has to be accorded privileged attention, were also ideas present in Moscovici’s first study.

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

In Portugal, unlike in other EU countries, analyses of the media coverage of biotechnology were not conducted for the period 1973 –1996 and only the period 1992–1999 has been covered, but focusing on just one paper ( Jesuíno et al., 2001). These reasons made a more encompassing study of the press relevant for gaining an understanding of the options presented to the Portuguese society. The centrality of the role of the Press becomes even more evident when we know that Portugal was among the less well-informed countries with regard to biotechno- logy ( Wagner et al., 2002), and that scarce inter-personal communication around this issue implied that the country was described as one that had not yet initiated the process of symbolic coping with biotechnology—a process driven by “inter- individual and mass media communication” and “by which individuals come to render new technologies or scientific achievements intelligible” ( Wagner et al., 2002, pg. 323)

. In this context, it is incumbent upon the press to set the agenda of what is

discussed and how, and a study of the representation of GMOs in the Portuguese press presented an opportunity for addressing, through the theoretical instruments of social representations theory ( Moscovici, 1976; 1988; 2001), the issues related to the role of old categories in rendering new meanings. More specifically, it was an opportunity to develop a study that would link the recent

themata

developments with the classical process involved in the construction of social representations— anchoring. And this was the main goal of the study. In order to achieve it, an analysis of the period ranging from 1999 to 2001 could assure coverage of a moment for which there were expectations of a stronger involvement of various actors, since some crucial events were observed towards the end of the ‘90s. This was the period examined.

Finally, a further objective was to explore a more generic question, this being the following: can the analysis of the old words and categories used to render the new help us foresee the future fate of biotechnology in the public sphere? Can it help us discern for biotechnology a fate more similar to that of nuclear power or a future more akin to that of ICT? Or to put it in another way, can an analysis of current words help us understand future worlds?

To fully develop the rationale for these questions, a brief digression through some central concepts of Social Representations Theory is needed.

SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS AND COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Common sense is acquired by each of us during the normal course of our life. It is a mother- knowledge which we assimilate, without specific training, at the same time as our mother tongue. (Moscovici, 2001, pg. 11)

Social Representations Theory is since its inception interested in the analysis of common sense, the forms it assumes, the transformations it suffers, and the

Genetically Modified Organisms

contents that feed it (Moscovici, 1961/76, 2001). In this sense it is a theory about “folk thinking” (Moscovici, 2001, pg. 17), and about social knowledge ( Marková, 2000). It emerged from a study of the transformations suffered by scientific con- cepts when appropriated by common sense and put to circulate in society—since this was the subject that Moscovici addressed through an examination of how psychoanalysis was appropriated by French society in the ’50s. In light of the subject that occupies us here —how innovation in biotechnology progresses through society—, it can be said that what occupied Moscovici in that first study was already the analysis of how scientific innovation progresses through society. This is a specific aim that Moscovici explicitly connects with the period during which the theory was formulated (Moscovici & Marková, 2000). The fact that it was initially formulated with this specific aim does not, however, imply that this is its sole objective. On the contrary, this approach can be said to incorporate the more general intention of understanding the functioning of the processes of appropriation, transformation and use of any type of knowledge. And it posits that these processes have to be invoked to explain how our society manages two simultaneous phenomena: diversity and consensus, differentiation and similitude (Moscovici, 1984; Billig, 1988; also Jovchelovitch, 1996; Castro, 2003). The simultaneous character of these phenomena is what has to be understood in our times, when a puzzling diversity of options in all fields is opened to people (Gervais & Jovchelovitch, 1998).

This is what the theory undertook to do, also considering how, in the unceasing circulation and recycling of the contents of common sense, what is old constantly re-emerges in what is new. This is to say, how new objects are understood through the lenses of old ones, in the complex transformations common sense suffers through communication. In these transformations several systems are involved. Everyday conversation, or interpersonal communication, and the press are two of the more important ones (Marková, 2000), and the theory has developed a number of analytical tools for examining their operation and impact.

First of all, the approach developed an articulated set of tools for the analysis of the press that date back to Moscovici’s first work. These are the ideas referring to the communicative modalities—Diffusion, Propagation and Propaganda. Developed through analysis of the French press, they are a tool for examining both the contents and the structure of press articles. According to that first work (Moscovici, 1976), Diffusion is a communicative modality that sets opinions and beliefs on motion and circulation; these beliefs can be—and often are—contradictory ones; this modality is not, however, characterised by attempts at conciliating them. The aim is not to solve contradiction, and accommodate divergence, but to present it, and let the reader arrive at his/her own conclusions. A second modality—Propagation—tries instead to articulate, with an overarching concili- ation key, what seemed contradictory. A third modality—Propaganda—is focused on behaviour, on its reinforcement or creation, and depicts a dichotomised world where what is right and what is wrong are on very different sides, and there is no space at all for conciliation.

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

It can be said that these proposals rest upon a very clear recognisance of the role of contradiction and the existence of a number of ways for dealing with it that are deducible by logic. That is, when we face the fact that about a certain relevant social issue there is <belief A> and there is also <belief non-A>, the logical options available are four. It is possible to choose one against the other (Propaganda), or it is possible to aim for conciliation on a super-ordinate level, redefining the beliefs as not contradictory at all (Propagation), or it is possible to just acknowledge their existence side by side, not favouring one over the other (Diffusion). It has been part and parcel of the generalist Press’s identity the claim that their role is to follow through the narrow and hard path of the latter option— that is, the impartial rendering of all positions to be found about controversial issues. Aims like objectivity and impartiality are central in the definition of the journalistic ethic. However, it is hardly possible to defend that when put to con- crete use, language can remain the totally transparent and impartial media we describe when describing logical possibilities. It is well known that the impossibil- ity of this transparency has now been both fully theorised and demonstrated ( Wittgenstein, 1953; Hodge & Kress, 1996; Potter, 1996).

Social Representations theory itself, through another of its analytic tools, conveys the difficulties of a simplistic understanding of diffusion. The analytic tool in question is the notion of “anchoring”, a process regulated by a socio-normative meta-system, and implied in the classification of people, objects or ideas into categories. What is social in this process is the selection of the anchoring categories, determined by the socio-normative meta-system that organizes the life of the groups. This is how Moscovici describes it: “it can always be observed that the initial direction, the angle from which a group will try to cope with the non-familiar, will be determined by the images, concepts and languages shared by that group” (1981, pg. 189). Developing this idea, Markova and Wilkie (1987), in turn, consider anchoring a “conservation principle”, assuring continuity in the reaction of the public to events.

When applied to the study of the press articles about GMOs, these ideas lead us to presupposing that different articles, different authors and different news- papers will choose different anchoring categories. They will compare GMOs to various discoveries, diseases, or organisms of the past. The selected categories in turn, will transport GMOs to different universes of meaning, and will make them progress through society by different paths.

Going back to what was said about the communicative modalities, what these ideas imply, then, is that in the concrete renderings in the press articles of the controversial ideas about a subject, even if both sides are given voice, the anchor- ing categories used for describing them may differ, and probably will. In turn, this difference may be a subtle way of giving unbalanced, partial, renderings. A par- tiality that may only be clearly visible through the perspective accorded by a joint analysis of several articles published during a length of time.

During the ’90s, the theory developed yet another instrument for the study of communication—the concept of

themata

. Moscovici e Vignaux (1994, see pg. 62)

Genetically Modified Organisms

state that themata may be considered “idées-sources”/source-ideas, that allow for a better conceptualisation of the relations between representation and commun- ication. They also argue that the concept is useful for a more through examination of the ways the past has for re-emerging constantly in current communications and representations—a constant concern in the work of Moscovici (cfr. Moscovici, 1984b; also Jovchelovitch, 1996; Castro, 2002). It is in this sense that “themata appear to have a generative as well as a normative power in the formation of a representation, fitting “new” information to the already existing one ( Moscovici, 2001, pg. 31). Themata are the core notions that maintain “the stability of the network of communicated knowledge and practice” ( Moscovici, 2001, pg. 31).

Marková (2000) defines

themata

as “such oppositional categories which, in the course of history, become problematized; for one reason or another they become the focus of attention, and a source of tension and conflict ( pg. 446). Examples of

themata

are: nature/culture; reason/emotion; edible/non edible; beautiful/ugly. However, it is important to insist that not all oppositional pairs become themata that generate social representations. For that, they have to be brought to public attention, and generate argumentation (Markova, 2000). Sometimes, a pair, or one of its terms, can lay dormant for a hundred years, and revive again only under the touch of conflict.

Themata incorporate the idea that we think and reason in an argumentative way, by contrasting arguments (Moscovici, 1976; Billig, 1988). They carry the assumption that at the heart of arguments and as generative devices for their development, are these central oppositional pairs. This is the reason why the study of themata can help advance our understanding of the “old and irritating enigma of common sense, i.e., why it affirms one thing as well as its opposite (Moscovici, 2001, pg. 32). And, by the same token, it is also possible to hypothesise that themata are also the reason why “social representations occur in pairs, each one having its alternative” ( pg. 33), a question that has gained more space in Moscovici’s texts during the last years (see Moscovici, 2001; 2002).

OBJECTIVES

Framing the issues in the above way implies that studying the themata developed in the press articles would be useful for understanding the organisation of the semantic fields about GMOs. If a study of the anchoring categories could be added to the themata analysis, it would be possible to obtain an integrated over- view of the pattern of representations. And if the previous analyses were to be linked with an examination of the communicative modalities, an overview of the level of conflict associated to the various representations could be achieved.

Within this frame, the specific aims of the present work were:

• To find out which were the themata more frequently used by the Portuguese press when writing about GMOs, during the years of 1999 to 2001, in order

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

to map out the general configurations of the contrasting semantic fields mobilised around this subject.

• To study how the themata were linked with the categories selected for anchoring the GMOs, that is, the categories towards which, through com- parisons, the GMOs are linguistically pushed.

• A final goal was to study how the communicative modalities of the articles were related to the configurations of themata and anchoring categories. The assumption behind this last goal was that linking the communicative modal- ities to those configurations would allow a clearer picture of the themes and comparisons around which clear opposition emerged, and of the themes and comparisons that were more shielded from controversy and were passed as less polemic.

METHOD

All the articles that included the expressions Genetically Modified/Genetic Modification or Genetic Manipulation, or Transgenics, were collected, in five Portuguese newspapers—three daily papers and two weekly papers—, over three years—1999, 2000 and 2001. The daily papers are papers of wide circulation, and the weekly papers are more important ones in the country. All belong to the generalist press.

The articles were coded with a Coding Manual adapted from another study of the Press (Naiff, Sá & Moller, 2003; Castro, 2003b), and transformed to conform to this object of study

. Each article was considered a unit. For the analysis of the themata, the articles were read several times, until 13 oppositional pairs were defined. Afterwards, each article was coded four times, and for each time a term (of the two each thema comprises) was identified as being developed in the article and coded as such. For instance, if an article mobilised expressions such as respect for nature, simplicity, life without technology, purity and so on, it was considered to develop the natural/cultural thema, and coded 1 in this thema, meaning that it developed the first term of the pair.

For the codification of the anchoring categories, the first step was to develop a set of 11 categories that considered the comparisons and analogies for GMOs. For instance, if the GMOs were compared to hybrid corn, the category was “agriculture”. If they were compared to other revolutions of the past, the category was “progress”, and if their results were compared to pollution, the category was “contamination”. Afterwards, each of the 11 categories was coded as present or absent from each article.

In order to code each of the articles on one of the three communicative modal- ities, the definitions above provided in the review of these concepts were used. Also used were the more operational guidelines as follows. An article was coded “Propaganda” only if it defended a clear position and admitted no doubts or the

Genetically Modified Organisms

possibility of conciliation. Only in cases when at the end of the reading it was obvious that the author was either pro or against Genetic Modification was the article coded as Propaganda. An article was coded as “Propagation”, instead, when the author explicitly presented a way of conciliating positions. The concil- iation could be envisaged as already occurring or as postponed to the future, but the idea that the different positions could be accommodated in an overarching outcome had to be present. Finally, articles that brought contrasting positions to the reader, but made no attempt whatsoever at choosing or conciliating them – presenting only a listing of the different possibilities—were coded Diffusion. Also coded was the general orientation of the article—it could be favourable, unfavour- able or assume no clear position.

RESULTS

The total number of articles collected was 239; about 9% (n = 21) were published in the weekly papers, and the rest (around 91%) in the daily press. Journalists were the authors of 91.6% of the examined articles. Only about 5% of the articles were written by researchers or scientists. During the three years studied only one letter from a reader was published. There were also notoriously few interventions from the NGOs, as well as from politicians. It is thus evident that the issue of Genetic Modification was not highly visible in the Portuguese press during these years.

In what concerns the general tone of these articles mostly authored by profes- sional journalists, the majority are not clearly either pro or against GMOs, and the proportion of these does not vary along the years under study. There was however a tendency for the articles with a favourable orientation to augment ( ( X

(233,4) = 8.2, p < .08) from 1999 to 2001. In what concerns the communicative modalities, diffusion is the most common

one, which was to be expected, since all the newspapers belong to the generalist Press, and the majority of articles are authored by journalists. Propagation was present in only 8 articles and Propaganda in less then 10% of the articles.

On the whole, these results show how incipient the debate on GMOs was in our country during these years—neither scientists, nor people involved in govern- ing the country were assiduous in the pages of the five more important papers.

Table 1. Orientation towards the GMOs in the daily press: Frequency and residuals, by year

1999 2000 2001 Total

Favorable 9 ( −) 12 (=) 17 (+) 38 Unfavorable 25 (=) 27 (=) 16 (=) 68 No clear position 52 (=) 51 (=) 30 (=) 133

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

Genetic Modification was an issue reported mainly by journalists, who alone remained the principal responsible for influencing what the Portuguese public was to think about GMOs. This is, obviously, an added reason for inspecting in detail the articles published. For if diffusion implies that a diversified audience is being sought, and several sides of the issues are discussed in order for the reader to make his/her own decisions, it is important to try to find the fine contents of the articles, through a joint examination of themata, anchoring categories and com- municative modalities.

This was attempted with an

homals

, that was performed entering the themata variables as the sole active ones, a procedure that allows for these to be the sole responsible for the configuration of the space defined through the co-occurrences matrix. The remaining variables were afterwards projected over this space as illustrative variables. The input matrix used for the

homals

procedure is presented in Table 2.

The

homals

yielded two first axes responsible for 42% of the inertia (eigenvalue for the 1st dimension = .2372; eigenvalue for the 2nd dimension = .1840). The corresponding discrimination measures are presented on Table 3.

As stated, the anchoring categories were afterwards projected on the space defined by the first two axes, as illustrative variables. From the 11 original anchor- ing categories, only the six with higher frequencies were projected. The same procedure was followed for the communicative modalities, the global positioning of the articles and the year when they were published. The projection of the first two dimensions, with the active variables defining the space (the themata) and the projected variables is presented in Figure 1.

The first quadrant shows that the issues of Illness, Ignorance, Problems and the Safety and Risk issues involved in Genetic Modification are often jointly developed. In this quadrant we can find the only pair that has the two terms that

Table 2. Input Matrix for the Homals

1 2

Benefits/problems 29 50 Nature/culture 10 49 Knowledge/ignorance 15 105 Public/private 21 55 Health/disease 33 35 Risky/safe 39 18 Global/local 20 6 Past/present 18 26

Note. For every pair, the first term was ascribed the number 1, and the second the number 2. Table 2 thus shows that 29 articles dealt with the benefits of GMOs, and 50 articles treated the problems these can bring. From the 13 original themata, only the eight with higher frequencies were used for this analysis.

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compose it un-separated—the pair risk/safety. This is a pair that is at the very heart of this discussion, condensing a rather relevant set of issues, and we can see that the two terms are mobilised together, that is, when an article speaks of risks, it also thematizes safety.

Table 3. Discrimination measures, by variable, by dimension

Dimension 1 Dimension 2

Benefíts/problems .381 .333 Nature/culture .107 .212 Knowledge/Ignorance .297 .042 Public/Private .131 .093 Health/Disease .483 .197 Risky/Safe .071 .146 Global/local .135 .361 Past/Present .293 .088

Figure 1 Projection of the first two dimensions yielded by the homals.

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

The second quadrant shows that discussions about Health also mention the Benefits of genetic modification, for the Present, and the Public interest of the technique. In other words, when the GMOs are linked to the domain of health, they are located in a semantic space where the ideas of public interest for the present are also invoked. In what concerns the third quadrant, it jointly displays the terms Past, Natural and Local, thus organising a space opposed to that of the fourth quadrant, where genetic modification is discussed as having to do with Private interests and Globalization and as pertaining to the sphere of the Cultural.

In sum, the first two quadrants are dominated by the Red discussion, mobilis- ing the oppositions health/disease, risk/safety, benefits/problems, past/present. The third and fourth quadrants, in turn, are dominated by issues that pertain to the Green discussion, mobilising the oppositions natural/cultural, past/present and global/local.

These conclusions are strengthened when the illustrative variables are exam- ined. Occupying a central position in the Red discussion we find the anchoring categories of Progress, Disease and Science. This means that in the

Red

context the Genetic Modification is compared to other scientific discoveries, its effects are compared to other illnesses ( plagues, Aids, for instance) of the past, and the innovation they constitute is described as similar to other progresses and revolu- tions of the past. It is also to be noticed that it is in the context of this discussion that we find the articles with a favourable tone.

In turn, occupying a central position in the Green discussion, we find the anchoring categories of Agriculture and Ideology. This means that in this context the GMOs are compared to other past agricultural interventions over nature (like hybrid corn), and to disaster scenarios, such as “brave new world” or “Pandora’s box” or “eugenics”. Further indicators of the polemic tone of this discussion are the presence of the Private term—indicating mentions to the interest of private corporations—, the fact that Propaganda appears here, and the fact that the clearly non-favourable articles are also located within this space.

Also worth noticing is the fact that from 1999 to 2001 the discussion has moved along the first dimension, that is, away from problems and diseases, and to the semantic space of health and benefits.

DISCUSSION

One aim of this paper was to link the recent themata developments in social representations theory with the classical process involved in the construction of social representations—anchoring—and with the communicative modalities that are part of the theory since its inception. Another was to see how some general trends of the Portuguese debate about biotechnology related to the main features of the European wide one.

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Studying the relations between the themata and anchoring seemed particularly interesting in the field of genetic modification, since the terminology in this very new field is still being moulded. And, as Moscovici (1984a) has remarked, as a consequence of anchoring, when a new event must be understood its integration is accomplished by moulding it in such a way that it appears continuous with existing ideas (see Joffe, 2003). So, in sum, for a new issue, this type of analysis would permit us to examine how the central meaning pairs—themata—would articulate with the devices that carry the new into the very land of the old—the anchoring categories—, transforming both in the process.

In relation to the comparative objective, it can be stated that the GMO debate did not exactly set the Portuguese society on fire during these three years, con- tinuing as tepid as before. Neither producers and mediators of science, nor the non specialized public, invested much energy in the Press— during these three years less than 10% of the 239 articles examined were authored by other people than professional journalists.

As a society, we seem to have remained in a pre- symbolic coping state where biotechnology is concerned, since a shared code for communicating and thinking about this particular innovation, and the “calibration of minds” that people in groups achieve through discourse ( Wagner, 1998) is still underdeveloped.

The examination of the relations between themata and anchoring yielded two general semantic spaces. A first one structured by the oppositions of health and disease, of risk and safety, of the benefits and the problems of Genetic Modifica- tion and of present and past times and carried by the categories of science, progress, contamination and illness. The second space, in turn, organised around the opposition of culture and nature, of the local and the global and of the past and the present, is resonant of the Green discussion, and presents a less favourable connotation, since Propaganda is located here and the anchoring categories of ideology and agriculture are central.

In general these results are in line with other studies around Europe (Bauer, 2002). But they also allow for some more speculation about the future. For instance, it can be argued that, carried into the gravitational area of such potently positive categories as Progress and Science, the applications of genetic modifica- tion to the health area face the prospect of a more positive future than the Green area. In this sense, the representational pattern around the health domain illus- trates how the production of “domesticated worlds” ( Wagner, 1998) happens through the extending of a net of anchoring categories over new domains, a net that captures “brute facts” and renders them domesticated through linking them to old meanings.

This same pattern seems also to corroborate the idea that in the concrete depictions in the press of the controversial opinions about a subject, even when all sides are given voice, the anchoring categories used for describing them are different. This difference, in turn, is indeed a subtle way of giving partial renderings— a partiality visible only through the joint analysis of several articles published

Paula Castro and Isabel Gomes

during a period of time. Since diffusion offers no general obvious integrative frame, it is a seemingly innocuous, but very effective way of introducing new themes and concerns into the flux of conversation. It is thus essential to develop a better understanding of the oppositions and comparisons it mobilises as well as finer-grain analyses of how these are patterned together and in time, a task this paper could not do.

Finally, to be remarked is the fact that it is only in connection with the agri- food polemic that the crucial pair nature/culture is to be found. It cannot be overlooked that this is one of the most central oppositional pairs in humanity’s history (Latour, 1994; Moscovici, 2001). That this is more characteristic of the Green context is an indicator both of a more dichotomised discussion and of more resistance in this area than in the Red domain, more shielded from this crucial opposition, which also played a role in the nuclear energy controversies. Manipulation in the health area is presented as having to do with progress, re- volution and science, not with culture

versus

nature, or with the upsetting of nature’s balance or of nature’s “natural” way of working. It is through this path more easily striped of moral content and less resistance is to be expected.

If it is when plants are discussed that the nature/culture problematic emerges, not when health-care issues are discussed, this may be because what happens in hospitals, or in the health-care area in general, is being very successfully defined in our society as unconnected to the realm of the natural. And thus the questions of moral appropriateness are perhaps for many people immediately cut short by concerns of the type “what if I, one day, need a cloned liver?”. Nowadays

Human nature

is an expression that more easily evokes the “human psychological condi- tion” than the human belongingness to the realm of the natural. Or put another way, the health care area is very illustrative of how the individual and the indi- vidual’s right to be re-paired is a pervasive value.

On the contrary, what happens in both our plates and in our soil is still more clearly defined as belonging to the realm of the natural. We could even say that soil, agricultural land, trees, vegetables, cereals, have been successfully framed in the last years as the last preserve of “naturalness” we have left, and should not spoil or contaminate. During the last three decades Green nature has had Green- peace (and other environmentalist associations) to “speak for it” and against Genetic Modification (see Levidow, 2002), and the release of GMOs into nature was successfully framed as something morally reproachable, as controversial and as a form of tinkering with “natural” nature. Humanity does not seem to have a Greenpeace to act as a spokesperson—but, anyway, who would want health care to conform to the limits of “natural” nature, whatever that is?

As Van der Daele (1993) has remarked, in our society the attempt to make Nature inviolable “is bound to run up against interests and rights which are also deemed

prima facie

to be legitimate in our society— especially the rights to health and self-determination. Medicine in particular has legitimized higher and higher levels of technicization of the human body, making the “unthinkable” thinkable:

Genetically Modified Organisms

for instance, artificial hearts or the transplanting of animal organs into human beings. ( . . . ) The healthy with their call for naturalness are in no position to deny the sick the use of such technologies. The use of technology is becoming a part of the right to health.” (pg. 163). As a consequence, Red applications are evicted from the nature/culture dichotomy and thus face a future more shielded from reservations founded in certain central values.

And so, it seems that many of us are prepared to trade gloriously shiny toma- toes and apples for small, wrinkled, pesticide-free, non-GM ones—in fact, wish to do so. But who, when the time comes, will not succumb to the temptation to trade a wrinkled and afflicted body for a glorious new one, like the character in Kure- ishi’s story?

Paula Castro Departamento de Psicologia Social Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa, Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa Portugal [email protected]

NOTES

This is hardly surprising, of course, since BT Maize and modified soybeans date from 1996 and Dolly was introduced to the public in 1997.

Perhaps this is not surprising, if we consider that it was only in 1999 that the Environmental NGOs joined in a Platform against GM food, and the first study about GMOs was published. It adds that the first Parliamentary discussion of a project of law about GMOs only took place in 2000 (see Jesuíno et al., 2001).

The project for which the manual was first developed had the general coordination of Celso de Sá, to whom the pioneer definition of several of the categories is owned.

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