RSS
Two CSTPR students, Juhi Huda and Lucy McAllister, have been awarded CARTSS Research grants (Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences) to fund their research at University of Colorado Boulder.
Juhi Huda’s research project broadly investigates how policy narratives influence the policy process as well as how policy actors within coalitions utilize narratives to gather support for policy outcomes. Drawing from two theoretical frameworks, the Narrative Policy Framework (research on the role of policy narratives) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (research on coalitions and actors and their beliefs), her project proposes to study policy narratives surrounding commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops in India focusing on a case study of Bt eggplant (brinjal). In spite of agricultural biotechnology policies being adopted early on, as of 2016, no genetically engineered crop has been released in the public sector in India. Bt cotton was commercialized in 2002 in the private sector. In 2008-2009, the government proposed a strategy to introduce GM crops commercially in the public sector with Bt eggplant. However, an indefinite moratorium was placed in 2010. Intense public debate continues among different actors. Agricultural biotechnology has been a controversial issue and through a study of the varied narratives that have been employed by various actors in the policy issue, this project attempts to understand how policy narratives of relevant actors and their beliefs contained therein may influence the policy process. These narratives will be collected from media documents, public consumption documents distributed by organizations involved in the policy issue as well as through interviews and surveys.
Lucy McAllister’s research seeks to elucidate the many disconnects between electronics commodity chain problems, including child labor, human trafficking, the persistence of unsafe and environmentally hazardous working conditions at electronics factories, and electronic waste issues, and consumer awareness and knowledge of such harms. More specifically, it seeks to investigate whether the legitimization of electronics consumption is the result of tactics employed by lead electronics firms to divert the attention of its consumer base from the harms of the electronics commodity chain. Thus, it is necessary to determine whether or to what extent consumers affirm the images projected by multinational electronics corporations. The CARTSS research grant will support a computerized self-administered questionnaire that will help determine the extent to which U.S. consumers have accepted corporate-framings of the electronics commodity chain. The data collected from the survey will be used third empirical chapter of Lucy’s dissertation.
