ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the ethnographic accounts in the GMFuturos research and the specific controversies that GM crop technologies have provoked in Mexico, Brazil and India. The controversies that technologies generate are not only between developers and end-users, but also among and between intellectuals, politicians, development workers and grassroots social movements. GM technologies combine diverse knowledges, instruments and facilities. GM maize as a staple food-crop with strong associations to a sense of national identify provokes different modes of engagement and rejection than the modification of cotton in India or soya in Brazil. The introduction of GM crops requires people to experiment with the core relational dynamics but without any guarantee that the new ways of living will offer an improvement or even a viable way forward. GM crops clearly provide exciting projects for scientists, good investments for entrepreneurs and considerable hope for some small farmers.
