During the first years of organized agricultural research in Mexico in the 1940s, two agencies ran separate programs for corn improvement. The Rockefeller Foundation's Office of Special Studies and the Mexican government's Office of Experiment Stations carried out research on corn with distinct aims and methods. That they differed strongly is well established in the literature. Many authors have discussed a Rockefeller Foundation program that reportedly emphasized hybrid corn, a technical choice that embodied a preference for assisting wealthy farmers who (...) could afford hybrid corn and the necessary agricultural inputs. Conversely, these authors attribute to the Mexican program a focus on open-pollinated corn, which presumably manifested its concern for Mexico's small farmers who saved seed. This article argues that the reverse was true. The Rockefeller Foundation program initially was committed to a type of improved open-pollinated corn while the Mexican program proceeded with a strict, U.S.-style hybrid program. I try to illuminate each group's priority on yield, as well as additional significant, and complicating, breeding priorities that precluded any collaboration between the two. (shrink)

Do farmers in the southern Mexican highlands practice science? The anthropologist Roberto González argues that they do in his well‐written and solidly researched account of Zapotec farmers' cultivation of corn, sugarcane, and coffee. This book speaks to enduring questions concerning the nature of science through its focus on the often‐overlooked sophistication of traditional farming. Historians of science interested in agriculture, international development, and definitions of science more broadly will find in Zapotec Science a rich store of wide‐ranging questions and provocative (...) answers.González aims to move beyond the limitations of many sociological and anthropological studies of traditional societies. Many ignore international “cosmopolitan” influences, and most that do deal explicitly with these treat the traditional and the cosmopolitan as separate spheres. González finds no reason to treat these categories as nonoverlapping, as he documents how Zapotec farmers have experimented with and adopted techniques, implements, and crop varieties from many parts of the globe. And the flow goes both ways. Many so‐called cosmopolitan scientists are beginning to recognize the importance of traditional knowledge for solving problems in industrialized nations. But though the boundaries may be blurred, González argues that the conceptual bases of Zapotec agriculture are “culturally incommensurable with those predominating in industrialized societies” .In Chapter 1, González elaborates his position relative to other anthropological work on local science and traditional ecological knowledge and poses comparative questions about Zapotec and cosmopolitan science. Chapters 2 and 3 richly detail the daily practice of Zapotec agriculture and its environmental and geographical, cultural, and historical contexts. González emphasizes campesinos' craft, the refined skills that underlie every aspect of home, community, and agricultural life.González's research comes to the fore in the middle chapters on maize, sugarcane, and coffee cultivation. Here he clearly illustrates how Zapotec farming is founded on five fundamental values: household maintenance , mutual aid among families, personification of the earth and supernatural beings, an understanding of physical work as normal and desirable, and an emphasis on the quality of food over its quantity. For each crop he shows how present agricultural practices have emerged from an evolving balance between local crop development over hundreds or thousands of years and carefully weighed periodic opportunities to adopt new practices or plant varieties. Sugarcane cultivation, for example, illustrates how Zapotec farmers' decisions grow out of the five core values rather than a more narrow “economic rationality.” Zapotec communities do not consume cheap, white, processed sugar; rather, they produce and use an older, less processed, more expensive form called panela. Panela's persistence in their diet is due to its role in reciprocal social relationships and to Zapotecs' preference for high‐quality, good‐tasting food. The book concludes with a critique of Green Revolution development strategies and a lively discussion of the fertile borderlands between traditional and cosmopolitan knowledges.González's definition of science, closely related to Bronislaw Malinowski's, centers on practical knowledge. González argues that Zapotec farmers practiced science as they experimented with new techniques and implements from beyond Oaxaca's borders. Although traditional and cosmopolitan knowledge are conceptually distant, the author places great weight on what they share: both are systematic searches for practical knowledge. Traditional agriculture offers materials and methods that cosmopolitan scientists increasingly need.This book's strength lies, not surprisingly, near González's expertise: his careful description and analysis of Zapotec farmers' practices, logic, and values. As with all ambitious and worthwhile projects that pull together scientific enterprises that are culturally, geographically, and conceptually distant, González's book leaves questions unanswered. His characterization of cosmopolitan science is at times contradictory and often narrow. While Zapotec scientists are said to consider a variety of procedures and techniques and “adopt what seems to work according to their own categories, and reject what does not,” cosmopolitan scientists operate according to “one view, one procedure” . A more thorough characterization of cosmopolitan science would strengthen the comparisons with Zapotec farming and would complement the direct treatment that González provides for cosmopolitan science's exceptions, sustainable agriculture and alternative medicine. This would also help to clarify differences between natural scientists and development economists, whose values are often not distinguished. Furthermore, cosmopolitan science seems to dwell outside of Mexico. What would it look like to widen the lens to include the Mexican urban academic scientific community? How does this book speak to the wider literature on scientific practice that largely focuses on cosmopolitan science?Zapotec Science is an important contribution to our understanding of nonindustrialized agriculture outside of the United States. It will, I hope, prompt historians to delve into the historical relationships among people who employ agricultural knowledge toward divergent goals: scientists, farmers, and government leaders dwelling in different national and professional cultures. (shrink)