El Valle de los Caídos, presentado como conflicto El sesgo anticlerical.

Social scientists have long been aware of the importance of critically engaging with the written form of research reports. As I have already mentioned (see section 4.2 above), the “crisis of representation” has led ethnographers to acknowledge that writing can at best produce only a partial account of the field of study. But this is not to say that the ultimate goal of academic writing is to produce an impartial account of reality; researchers always write with the aim of making some kind of difference to the world. As Law observes, “[s]ometimes words, stories, and no doubt pictures are also actions” (Law, 2002a, p. 177, emphasis in original). At the very least we hope to use our writing to say something about our own abilities:

As ethnographers, for example, we tend to pick stories from our field notes, weave them into a larger story for the argument and at the same time try to craft a story about ourselves as smart and capable authors (Ziewitz, 2010)

Academic writing therefore represents a blurring of the boundary between object and subject because researchers are always “present” in the texts they produce. This is something that should be recognised by using, for example, a first person perspective in order to “subtly and

continuously remind the reader that the narrative is the product of the researcher’s mind” (Mabry, 2008, p. 219). But the overall structure of the final written report also warrants careful attention, as academic texts do not come in one specific format. Disciplines are in part shaped by

87 the written presentation of published research, and it is therefore important to assess what is considered an appropriate writing style in a given field of scholarship (Murray & Moore, 2006). Academic writing in the natural sciences is characterised by an impersonal, objective style that discusses complex subject matter through the use of syntactically simple sentences (Gross, Harmon, & Reidy, 2002). It is therefore stylistically different to other forms of writing, particularly works of fiction. However, Law (2004) argues that social scientists should approach the written representation of their work with a greater degree of creativity so that their texts can be read for “the pleasure of the read itself” as opposed to “the destination, where it will take us, where we will be delivered” (p. 11). Similarly, Richardson (2003 [2000]) recommends that students should nurture their creative writing abilities throughout the course of their research by engaging in a number of activities; for example, they should keep a research journal in which they experiment with different styles of written presentation, such as autobiography or drama.

In some cases, such alternative literary forms have been used in the final presentation of

academic work. Latour’s (1996a) examination of the “Aramis” rapid transport system is exemplary in this regard: Latour fuses the literary form of the detective novel with the study of the life and death of a scientific artefact to create a new hybrid genre: “scientifiction” (p. ix). The end result is a text that reads partly like a novel, partly like an academic text, partly like a scrap-book of information drawn together with a central narrative provided by the dialogue between the professor and engineering student charged with investigating Aramis’ demise. Latour uses literary styles of humour and intrigue to draw the reader along what is nevertheless a serious academic journey.

Although Aramis occupies a relatively unique position in the academic literature, there are numerous other examples of texts that challenge the boundaries of conventional academic scholarship. Dialogue is often used in STS texts (see e.g. Ashmore, 1989; Knorr-Cetina, 1999), and ANT also uses this tool to convey and discuss ideas (see e.g. Callon & Law, 1995; Latour, 1996a, 2005; Law & Singleton, 2012). The final result can read much like the script of a play, thereby replacing formal academic language with idiomatic expression. Furthermore, by casting the researchers themselves as central characters it replaces the objectivity of a third-person perspective with a subjective, first-person interaction.

This use of dialogue to introduce more than one “voice” into the pages of an academic text is arguably an attempt to practice a literal form of multiplicity. But this is not the only method of achieving such an end, and the use of different narrative styles are evident in the literature. In

88 such cases, the writer follows various overlapping stories that apparently centre on the same “thing”, but are as alert to difference as they are to similarity. The result is not a singular coherent description of reality but a “patchwork” that is linked together by “[p]artial and varied

connections between sites, situations, and stories” (Law & Mol, 1995, p. 290, following Strathern, 1991).

Mol’s (2002) examination of The body multiple is perhaps the best known example of this style of writing. In this book she presents two texts: a discussion of the empirical results of her hospital ethnography; and a “subtext” (p. ix) that discusses relevant literature. Although these two texts are physically separate, they are nevertheless interconnected and designed to be read in concert with one another. Mol does not impose or even recommend a reading style on her audience, stating simply that it is up to individual readers to decide this for themselves.

In a similar vein, Lavau (2013) alternates between two separate narratives in her analysis of sustainable water management in Australia. The first tells of intersecting practices that enact the multiple realities of river management traced in this study; as such, it is a more conventional approach to academic writing. The second takes a reflective tone, focusing on the materiality of the river and considering how realities come to be. Lavau describes this second narrative as “a playful experiment in taking the river seriously as a thing that forces thought” (p. 418). By using these two different narratives, Lavau argues that this method of writing “functions as a literary strategy for interrupting and disrupting that which is certain, simple, and smooth” (ibid.), thereby providing a written representation of the multiplicity that lies at the heart of her study.

Lavau’s comments echo Law’s (2002a) observation that “smooth narrative makes more or less smooth objects” (p. 197). Here Law is referring to what are commonly referred to as “grand narratives”, singular representations that seek to provide an overarching report on reality, but in doing so also perform actions, thereby bringing that reality into being. Law’s solution is also to experiment with the use of alternative narrative structure in academic writing, and he does this by providing a “fractionally coherent” text in his book Aircraft Stories (2002a). This examination of the British military’s plans to build the TSR2 aircraft in the 1960s was begun in the spirit of early ANT texts, and Law initially focused on the processes and outcomes of heterogeneous engineering, publishing a number of papers on this topic36_{. But as he progressed with his}

research, he found that the heterogeneous network he sought to describe was more than just a socio-technical assemblage; it had a rhizomatic structure formed from “a tissue of little

36 _{For a description of this phase of his research and a list of the associated publications see Law (2002a, p.}

89 narratives” (2002a, p. 164) that incorporated “[d]iscontinuities and stutterings” (p. 185). Rather than smoothing out these jagged edges to produce a grand narrative, Law embraced them. His final text is thus doubly performative: Law not only considers the fractional coherence of the TSR2 aircraft, but also examines the fractional coherence of the stories he produces.

Following Law (2002a) I have adopted a rhizomatic structure in the presentation of my written results. In each of my results chapters (5, 6 and 7) I begin with a number of intertwining narratives that relate to the case study material I have collected and analysed. Following these separate narratives about the “object” of my study, I then consider how to draw them together in a single representation that nevertheless preserves the fractional coherence of the object. In these discussions of how to represent the object another discontinuity is apparent, as a different approach has been taken in the study of tearless onions (Chapters 5 and 6) in comparison to containment facilities (Chapter 7). The former put particular emphasis on the use of network diagrams to represent the tearless onion, and there is a large degree of symmetry between the two chapters. But the latter makes no use of network diagrams, and considers a variety of object representations that have been developed in the ANT literature. While this does not make for a “smooth narrative”, it does allow for discussion and critique, both in relation to the GMO research objects I have studied, and the theoretical and methodological tools I have used.

4.5 Summary

This thesis is a case study of GMO research practices in New Zealand. As such, it makes use of data that has been collected from a wide variety of documentary sources, as well as a number of key informant interviews. The use of this variety of information sources has enabled triangulation of data; it has also resulted from the difficulties I encountered in my attempts to “follow the actors”. Rather than serve as an obstacle to progress, these difficulties have become part of my study, not only providing further data for analysis, but also leading to further questions for investigation. I will reflect on these experiences and discuss their implications in more detail in Chapter 8.

ANT also provides the methodological tools used to represent the results of this study. Chapters 5 and 6 make use of network diagrams to represent the enactment of GM “tearless onions”. Rather than reproduce an existing approach, however, these chapters will consider the relative merits of three different network diagrams that have been developed in the ANT and wider STS literature: Callon’s (1986a) “sociology of translation”, Star and Griesemer’s (1989) “boundary object”, and Latour’s (1999a) “circulatory system of scientific facts”. All three analytical chapters make use of

90 Law’s (2002a) “rhizomatic” structure to present research findings as a series of interweaving narratives.

In addition to the methodological tools outlined in this chapter, the theoretical concepts outlined in Chapter 3 have also been used to sort, interpret, and represent the data I have collected. In this way, this thesis employs a variety of methods that have been drawn from across the spectrum of the ANT methodological toolkit. This is partly because it incorporates two different case studies that have required slightly different approaches to data collection and analysis. But it is also because I do not want to enact a singular version of ANT, presenting one set of methods as if it were the only way to “do” ANT. Instead, the methodology employed in this thesis recognises that ANT is multiple, and encompasses a variety of tools that can be used to complement one another. This is particularly relevant to the study of GMO research practices, since there is a need to explore the layers of complexity that characterise such research whilst at the same time providing practical recommendations for change.

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Chapter 5

Bringing tearless onions into the laboratory

5.1 Introduction

The laboratory development of tearless onions was announced to the world in a number of different media between 2007 and 2008. Members of the C&F GM onion research team first presented their results at the 5th _{International Symposium on Edible Alliaceae (ISEA) held in}

October 2007 in the Netherlands; this presentation was later reported in the trade journal Onion World in December 2007 (“‘Tearless Onion’ technological breakthrough announced”, 2007). C&F published a media release in February 2008 summarising some of the information in the Onion World article (Crop and Food Research, 2008a); and further articles were written around the globe as news of the development became widely known (see e.g. Highfield, 2008). On the academic front, a peer reviewed article on the development was published in Plant Physiology in June 2008 (Eady et al., 2008) and a PhD student who had been working on the project submitted his thesis detailing the development of tearless onions in December 2008 (Kamoi, 2008).

In this chapter I will begin my analysis by using this group of documents to identify the actors involved in enacting tearless onions. There is some degree of overlap between these articles: the details they contain appear to cohere and form a singular tearless onion, even a singular onion. But where there is singularity there is also multiplicity; where there is simplicity there is also complexity (Law, 2002a). This complexity becomes more and more apparent as I go on to consider each actor in more detail, and begin to layer in a more diverse array of information including interview data, government reports, and company documents. So rather than tell a singular, linear story, I will relate multiple, intertwined accounts in order to explore these “layers” of the tearless onion.

In order to identify these actors I will begin with a diagram published in the Plant Physiology

paper mentioned above (Eady et al., 2008, Figure 1). This diagram is presented as if it reflects a reality “out there”, a starting point for experimentation and modification by the researchers. But the creation of tearless onions does not begin here; in many ways this diagram can be

conceptualised as a kind of end-point, just as the pathology of leg arteries is an outcome as opposed to the cause of atherosclerosis (Mol, 2002). This diagram is only a starting point in that it

92 provides a place for me to start as I “follow the actors” involved in the enactment of tearless onions.