| In this dissertation I explore the engagements of adivasi communities of southern Rajasthan in hybrid Bt cotton seed production, and in the neoliberal development of agriculture in western India. Through the lens of the labor process, and the gendered and generational divisions of labor in particular, I investigate the discursive and material processes of development and change that have accompanied the diffusion of agricultural biotechnology. Drawing on focus groups and semi-structured interviews conducted in Dungarpur District, Rajasthan, I connect experiences, perspectives, and processes of meaning making and subject formation among young migratory laborers and contract farming households, with a political economic analysis of the cotton seed and biotechnology industries.;I analyze the deployment of discourses of choice and freedom, used by advocates for agricultural biotechnology to market neoliberal development, on adivasi communities. I document the ambivalence that characterizes the decision making processes of young people and adivasi households to begin and to continue to engage in capitalist production. I consider: i) how young people make sense of their work as migratory laborers, their roles in cotton seed production, and their futures; ii) how contract farming arrangements, while creating a feeling of independence and hope among women and men in adivasi communities, also work to reinforce unequal power relations and the heavy reliance on relationships of trust and dependence with agents, Gujarati farmers and seed companies; and iii) the ways in which the diffusion of agricultural biotechnology acts as a mechanism for neoliberalization.;I question the emphasis on technologies in development discourse and practice, and on integration into capitalist production, as empowering for poor rural communities. I offer a contextualized, place-based study of biotechnology, and I push beyond stories of success and failure, and sweeping claims about the technology, to instead offer a critical feminist geography of biotechnology. I offer narrative accounts of contract farmers, child and young migrant laborers, and seed agents that both explore and trouble neoliberal notions of farmer choice. I argue that these discourses and practices of neoliberal development work to create the illusion of freedom while shifting risk and responsibility away from the market, and onto marginalized subjects of development. |
