This paper seeks to provide a broad overview of the historical, contemporary, and future roles of the rural social sciences. This overview is preceded by a brief elaboration of a model of the social, political, and economic structure of experiment station research organizations which is helpful...

The significance of biotechnology in agriculture during the late twentieth century has been as much in the realm of symbol and ideology as in its political economy. The ideological roots of biotechnology are long historical ones. The ideology of “productivism,” which was codified during...

Emerging bovine somatotropin (or “bovine growth hormone” [bGH]) technology has become highly controversial even though the technology is one to two years from commercial introduction. The bGH controversy is discussed and placed in the context of the evolution of the American public...

In 1973, Jim Hightower and his associates at the Agribusiness Accountability Project dropped a bombshell – Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times – on the land-grant college and agricultural science establishments. From the early 1970s until roughly 1990, Hightower-style criticism of and activism toward...