246 Fabien Girard and Manohisoa Rakotondrabe
The Analavory BCP is used as a case study to examine how and to what
extent the current global negotiations on seeds, genetic resources and TK are
being translated locally into practice. How did the boundary work manage to
articulate, if at all, different worldviews by mobilising boundary concepts such
as sustainable development (and its new incarnation, deployed against a modernist background, of “sustainable intensification” – Ministère de l’agriculture et
de l’élevage, 2018), biodiversity, nature stewardship and “biocultural diversity”
(Bridgewater & Rotherham, 2019; Graddy, 2013)? More specifically, can it be
said that the Analavory BCP has opened, as promised by advocates of BCPs, a
new discursive space aiming at a better considering the lifestyles and worldviews
of the communities involved (Bavikatte et al., 2015)? Conversely, should it be
concluded that this BCP has achieved nothing but the deployment of a “site of
promises, hopes, fears and hypotheses which itself sets new relations in motion”
(Hayden, 2003, p. 75), at the expense of local institutions, peasant solidarity and
traditional rules of seed exchange, lending credence to the idea that protocols are
nothing more than new forms of instrumentalisation of local practices and the
notion of “community” to serve powerful institutional interests?
What the Analavory case shows is that attention must be paid to how the
various actors, including funding entities, NGOs and State agents, introduce
“scripts” or “scenarios” into negotiations (on the concept of scripts, see this volume, Chapter 11); and, above all, how some scripts, due to the power of the
players driving them and through their mode of circulation, end up constituting a “canvas of interpretation of the world” (Bonneuil, 2019, p. 10). Built on
“hypotheses about the entities that make up the world”, scripts “define actors
with specific tastes, competences, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and
the rest” (Akrich, 1992, pp. 207–208). A script is akin to a “film script” which
sets “a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they
are supposed to act” (Akrich, 1992, p. 208) – in other words, the script works to
“enrol” or “enscript” the players (i.e. “conquer and discipline”, Fujimura, 1992,
p. 171) and in this way “manufactures” identities.
In Analavory, the boundary work fell short of opening up a new discursive
space for the conciliation of worlds. One piece of evidence of this is that the
Natural Justice’s community facilitator and the contract holder (from Bioversity
International) continue to disagree as to the public release of the text of the BCP.
Above all, it lacks clarity when it comes to the categories of resources that it purports to cover, while doubts remain as to whether these categories are, in their
own right, intelligible to the peasants. Focused on the development process, this
chapter strives to explain these misalignments or equivocations.
For this purpose, it first identifies and traces the dominant scripts as they
unfolded locally through “development brokers” (Bierschenk et al., 2000), brokers or “intermediaries between development institutions and peasants” (Lewis
& Mosse, 2006, p. 13), such as Bioversity International in this case, which are
still able to “mediate multiple worlds” (Demeulenaere, 2016, pp. 14–15), but
whose “local expertise” is now detached from a strong local foothold (ibid.).
The Analavory BCP is used as a case study to examine how and to what
extent the current global negotiations on seeds, genetic resources and TK are
being translated locally into practice. How did the boundary work manage to
articulate, if at all, different worldviews by mobilising boundary concepts such
as sustainable development (and its new incarnation, deployed against a modernist background, of “sustainable intensification” – Ministère de l’agriculture et
de l’élevage, 2018), biodiversity, nature stewardship and “biocultural diversity”
(Bridgewater & Rotherham, 2019; Graddy, 2013)? More specifically, can it be
said that the Analavory BCP has opened, as promised by advocates of BCPs, a
new discursive space aiming at a better considering the lifestyles and worldviews
of the communities involved (Bavikatte et al., 2015)? Conversely, should it be
concluded that this BCP has achieved nothing but the deployment of a “site of
promises, hopes, fears and hypotheses which itself sets new relations in motion”
(Hayden, 2003, p. 75), at the expense of local institutions, peasant solidarity and
traditional rules of seed exchange, lending credence to the idea that protocols are
nothing more than new forms of instrumentalisation of local practices and the
notion of “community” to serve powerful institutional interests?
What the Analavory case shows is that attention must be paid to how the
various actors, including funding entities, NGOs and State agents, introduce
“scripts” or “scenarios” into negotiations (on the concept of scripts, see this volume, Chapter 11); and, above all, how some scripts, due to the power of the
players driving them and through their mode of circulation, end up constituting a “canvas of interpretation of the world” (Bonneuil, 2019, p. 10). Built on
“hypotheses about the entities that make up the world”, scripts “define actors
with specific tastes, competences, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and
the rest” (Akrich, 1992, pp. 207–208). A script is akin to a “film script” which
sets “a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they
are supposed to act” (Akrich, 1992, p. 208) – in other words, the script works to
“enrol” or “enscript” the players (i.e. “conquer and discipline”, Fujimura, 1992,
p. 171) and in this way “manufactures” identities.
In Analavory, the boundary work fell short of opening up a new discursive
space for the conciliation of worlds. One piece of evidence of this is that the
Natural Justice’s community facilitator and the contract holder (from Bioversity
International) continue to disagree as to the public release of the text of the BCP.
Above all, it lacks clarity when it comes to the categories of resources that it purports to cover, while doubts remain as to whether these categories are, in their
own right, intelligible to the peasants. Focused on the development process, this
chapter strives to explain these misalignments or equivocations.
For this purpose, it first identifies and traces the dominant scripts as they
unfolded locally through “development brokers” (Bierschenk et al., 2000), brokers or “intermediaries between development institutions and peasants” (Lewis
& Mosse, 2006, p. 13), such as Bioversity International in this case, which are
still able to “mediate multiple worlds” (Demeulenaere, 2016, pp. 14–15), but
whose “local expertise” is now detached from a strong local foothold (ibid.).