Frankenfood: Risk and ritual in biotechnology

The first Canadian citizen conference on food biotechnology is analyzed as a cultural performance from the perspective of Victor Turner's model of social drama. The limitations of interpreting biotechnology from a risk assessment and risk communications framework are examined and a performative or dramatic approach is suggested as more meaningful in order to make sense of the current conflicting cultural constructions of biotechnology.;The final citizen position is interpreted as a negotiated code of meaning according to Hall's classification system and discussed as an experience of ritual redress and conditional re-integration into the existing social order.;The research discusses the major framing discourses reproduced at the conference: government, industry, consumer, public interest and environmental. The conference text is coded into the thematic areas of regulatory issues, public participation, citizen rights/consumer benefits, farmers' rights/corporate interests, missing voices and meta-themes such as the shift towards seeing nature as complex digital information.