Established in the fall of 2000, the IHC Noon Work-in-Progress Series is devoted to wide-ranging interdisciplinary projects currently pursued by scholars across the campus. It consists of informal presentations and discussion from 12 to 1 on selected afternoons. All interested faculty and students are welcome. Feel free to bring your lunch; the IHC will supply something to drink and the cookies.

Genetically modified food crops are new life-forms that promise great benefits: some may yield more than conventional varieties, resist disease or pests, require less water or pesticide, or incorporate extra vitamins. However they also entail complex risks that may not only affect our health and environment, but also have social and political implications. Bray will outline how the proponents and opponents of genetic modification have framed their arguments, and by emphasising the politics inherent in the design of different categories of genetically modified crops, she will suggest that anthropological analysis can clarify the types of risk at stake and thus strengthen not only the arguments but also the action of groups opposed to corporate transgenics.

Francesca Bray is Professor of Anthropology at UCSB. Her research includes historical studies of science and technology in China, and the politics of everyday technologies in contemporary California. Recent publications include Technology and Gender:
Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (California 1997), and “Genetically Modified Foods: Shared Risk and
Global Action,”in Barbara Herr Harthorn and Laury Oaks (eds), Revising Risk (forthcoming).This event is sponsored by the Department of Anthropology and Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.