biotechnology should grow out of existing scientific paradigms, and often do not recognise
1>iodivezsity as a flmdamental prerequisite to sustainable food and energy production.
Robert Walgate, the author, outlines the aims of the book (the 'dossier') as:
* to clarify the basic science behind biotechnology
* to tackle controversies over the possible risks and benefits of biotechnology for
the poor
* to report stories, actual cases of applications, research programmes and policies.
The flTStaim is achieved in excellent fashion. The second is covered satisfactorily, but
the third, though a number of stories are reported. is inadequate. The Development
Dialogue issue 'The Laws of Life" achieves this third aim far more comprehensively by
giving precise data on what has taken place in research during the last 15 years, and what
the trends are in the corporate world where most of the research is being carried out.
Whatcomes out of the three publications mentioned in this review is that biotechnology
has potentially far reaching effects for us all. It is, therefore, important that we lay people
have some understanding of the implications. Miracle or Menace is a good introduction
to this, but does not answer the question posed.
Reviewed by John Wilson, Permaculture Association of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe.
References
Fowler Cary, Lachkovics Eva, Mooney Pat and Shand H~ (1988) "The Laws of Life.
Another Development and the New Biotechnologies' in Development Dialogue,
1988:1-2, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, Uppsala.
New Internationalist (1991) "Test Tube Coup. Biotech's Global Takeover", March,No
217, Oxford.
Rural Communities under Stress. Peasant Farmers and the State in Africa, Jonathan
Barker, Cambridge University Press, African Society Today Series, Cambridge, 1989
(228pp, £8,95 pbk, £25 hbk, ISBN 0 521313589).
The stresSes on peasant communities do not all come from the State, and this book offers
a fairly comprehensive survey of them.
Peasant farming is described as touching on self-provisioning, full commercial farming
and scale of labour, and thus is a complex entity which is not easy to defme precisely. The
influences and stresses on it are equally complex: ecological, economic and political.
These, with less emphasis on the first. ~outlined along with the various solutions currently
on offer, all of which are found to have their dis.advantages. Some will take heart from the
conclusion that a worker-peasant alliance could be a viable political-economic strategy in
the hands of a longsighted government in control of its economy.
The wealth of material in this book makes it more dense than could be expected from
the declared intention of the series, to provide 'scholarly, but lively and up-to-date' books.
Scholarly and up-to-date it is, and for anyone seeking deeper understanding of the situation
and probIemsofthemajority of Africa's agriculturalists, and ofpolicy-malcers in this regard,
it will reward the careful reading which it demands.
Reviewed by Brian MacGmy SJ, Silveira House, Harare, Zimbabwe.