Scientizing Food Safety: Resistance, Acquiescence, and Localization in India

• Published date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12106
• Date: 01 December 2014

Scientizing Food Safety: Resistance, Acquiescence,

and Localization in India

Jessica Epstein

Since the mid-1990s, formal scientific risk management has been codified at

all levels of food safety governance in affluent states: firm-level standards,

national regulation, and international law. Developing countries’ access to

affluent importers and power in international standard-setting fora now

hinges on their scientific capacity. This article explores the consequences

of these developments in India, which moved quickly from resistance to

acquiescence, and then later to mobilization around narratives of scientific

risk management’s local benefits. The case suggests a two-stage model

of scientization among developing countries: (1) coercive and competitive

mechanisms drive adoption of science-based governance models, and (2) as

local actors mobilize to meet foreign demands, they attach their own interests

and agendas to science-based reforms. The outcome is a set of rational myths

about the benefits of scientization. The article draws on content analysis of

organizational, policy,and news documents and a small set of interviews with

highly placed pubic officials and industry representatives.

We cannot have totally differentkind of laws which is not based on

the scientific knowledge the world believes in. (Interview, public

official, 2009)

The demands of export have made us more aware of what’s going

on internationally . . . When others are placing demands on us,

we become aware that “ok, this is also what to do.” And then that

leads to people demanding for internal market to do. (Interview,

public official, 2009)

Many scholars have drawn attention to the escalation of food

safety requirements in affluent markets since the 1990s, and to the

difficulties this has posed for farmers, processors, and regulators in

the developing world (e.g., Anders and Caswell 2009; Athukorala

and Jayasuriya 2003; Henson and Jaffee 2006). In wholly separate

The author wishes to thank the three anonymous reviewers, Lane Kenworthy, Marc

Schneiberg, and Christina Xydias, for helpful feedbacks on prior drafts. She also thanks the

Indian Institute of Management Bangalore for its generous hosting in the fall of 2009.

Please direct all correspondence to Jessica Epstein, Sociology Department, Reed

College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR 97202; e-mail: jeepstein@reed.edu.

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Law & Society Review, Volume 48, Number 4 (2014)

© 2014 Law and Society Association. All rights reserved.

literatures, others have documented the increasing reliance of gov-

ernance institutions on formal scientific procedures and expertise,

a phenomenon known as scientization (Drori et al. 2003; Finnemore

1991; Schofer 2004). But few have documented the intersection of

these two developments.

Scientific technologies of governance are now codified as

requirements at all levels of food management: firm-level standards

and quality management systems, national regulation, and inter-

national law. This has posed serious challenges to developing

countries, whose access to affluent import markets and power in

international standard-setting fora now hinges on scientific capacity

in the form of advanced laboratories, institutionalized expertise,

and national data collection.

This article examines the unfolding of incentives for science-

based food safety governance, and their political and ideological

consequences, in India. The country initially, and quite publicly,

challenged pressures to adopt new regulatory models on the

grounds that it lacked the scientific capacity to do so. But opposi-

tion quickly gave way to acquiescence. And as state and industry

actors mobilized to build scientific capacity, they made expansive

new claims about the domestic benefits of reform. These efforts

integrated global norms into domestic political agendas and trans-

formed the nature of scientization from imposition to localized

ideology.

The case suggests a two-stage model of scientization among

developing countries. In the first stage, coercive and competitive

mechanisms drive adoption of science-based governance models

and advanced technologies. In the second stage, as local actors

mobilize to meet foreign demands, they attach their own interests

and agendas to science-based reforms. The outcome is a set of

rational myths about the benefits of scientization.

The article draws on content analysis of organizational, policy,

and news documents and a small set of interviews with highly

placed public officials and industry representatives.

Explaining Global Scientization

The Mechanisms

Many scholars have noted the worldwide spread of science-

based governance, sometimes called scientization (Drori et al. 2003;

Drori and Meyer 2006; Finnemore 1991; Quark 2012; Schofer 2004;

Winickoff and Bushey 2009). The phenomenon includes expanding

roles for scientists and their expertise in political life and the ascent

of formal risk analysis as the only legitimate method of locating and

articulating threats to the social order (Jasanoff 1999).

894 Scientizing Food Safety