Glocalizing genetically modified food: Time scales and ideologies

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Glocalizing Genetically Modified Food: Time scales and ideology

This paper will approach the question of ‘the global' and ‘the local' through a case study of a (g)local controversy over the field testing of genetically modified maize in a rural area in the north of Denmark. Our presentation will focus on how participants frame time in public events and how the discursive construction of time in a local setting may be seen as a recontextualization and resemiotization of global discourses. Our data stems from two sources: a video-recording of an anti-GMO-demonstration in a local town in Denmark, and an MP3-recording of a public meeting of farmers interested in growing GM crops.  By analysing the participants' choices of time circumstances in the two sets of data, we will illustrate differences in the perspectives presented on time; on the basis of our findings, we will reflect on how circumstances of time, being elements of Field, interact with Mode to convey different attitudes and ideological perspectives. An example showing an ideology laden perception of time is seen in the producers' impatience concerning government approval to grow GM crops, voiced in a question like ‘How many years are we behind in Europe?' Entirely different perceptions of time are voiced in an anti-GMO-demonstration, where participants operate with extensive time-scales involving future generations and life of the earth. The different time-scales illustrated in our study suggest that the participants' worldviews are shaped by global and local discourses interacting in the semiotic and rhetorical Mode.  

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