Exploring the resilience of Bt cotton's "pro-poor success story"

Expectations play a powerful role in driving technological change. Expectations are often encapsulated in narratives of technological promise that emphasize potential benefits and downplay potential negative impacts. Genetically modified (GM, transgenic) crops have been framed by expectations that they would be an intrinsically "pro-poor" innovation that would contribute powerfully to international agricultural development. However, expectations typically have to be scaled back in the light of experience. Published reviews of the socio-economic impacts of GM crops among poor, small-scale farmers in the developing world indicate that these effects have been very mixed and contingent on the agronomic, socio-economic and institutional settings where the technology has been applied. These conclusions should modulate expectations about the pro-poor potential of GM crop technology and focus attention on the conditions under which it might deliver substantial and sustainable benefits for poor farmers. However, the idea of GM crop technology as an intrinsically pro-poor developmental success story has been sustained in academic, public and policy arenas. This narrative depends upon an analysis that disembeds the technology from the technical, social and institutional contexts in which it is applied. Agricultural development policy should be based on a more rigorous and dispassionate analysis, rather than optimistic expectations alone.     

Fluid masculinities

Kim Townsend, Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others Naomi Segal, André Gide: Pederasty and Pedagogy Trev Lynn Broughton, Men of Letters, Writing Lives: Masculinity and Literary Auto/Biography     

Book reviews

Harvest of the Palm: ecological change in Eastern Indonesia, by James J Fox. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1977; xv, 290pp, 19 plates, 10 tables, 11 maps and figs. £10.25.

MAN AND ENVIRONMENT IN EASTERN TIMOR

Man and Environment in Eastern Timor: A Geoecological Analysis of the Baucau‐Viqueque Area as a possible basis for Regional Planning by Joachim K Metzner. Development Studies Centre Monograph No 8, The Australian National University, Canberra, 1977, pp 380, Illus.

DR JIGGINS REPLIES Iwan Simatupang, The Pilgrim, translated by Harry Aveling, Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, Writing in Asia Series, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, 1975.

A SECOND OPINION

A SECOND OPINION

COMMENT ON DR JIGGINES’ REVIEW OF Man and Environment in the Eastern Timor

Iwan Simatupang, The Pilgrim, translated by Harry Aveling, Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, Writing in Asia Series, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, 1975.