Origin of Public Patronage of Agricultural Research: Perpetuating the Myth of Autonomy and Political Neutrality

Rajeswari S. Raina
NISTADS

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     Last modified: April 13, 2005

Abstract
The concepts of autonomy and political neutrality of science were
formulated in the course of the evolution of patronage relationships in
developed countries.  The principal characteristics of the origin of
public agricultural research in Edwardian England are, the remarkable
socio-political transformations in agriculture and the emergence of the
middle class professional.  This paper is an attempt to explain how
historically, the “autonomy” and “political neutrality” of scientific
activity were formulated in the course of the organization of the public
research systems in developed countries.  Since then, the deeply
political and socially embedded nature of the origins of formal public
sector agricultural science, have within agricultural research
establishments, always been accepted as politically neutral and ‘purely’
technological.  Accordingly, technologies applied to agricultural
problems lead to greater production/producitivity and that in turn
reduces hunger and eradicates poverty. The science that generates these
technologies is therefore patronized by the State to achieve this
politically neutral objective. Further, the institutionalization of
these public research systems in the less developed countries (though
marked by flagrant political exigencies) have been characterised as
changes enabled mainly by neutral technologies/knowledge. The
subservience and unquestioning acceptance from the social sciences (in
formal organized agricultural research) to this neutral linear R&D
model, and the lack of social accountability in agricultural science,
are institutional legacies that less developed countries and
agricultural sciences in general continue to live with.

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