Seeds of Struggle: A Political Ecology of Millet Growing in Aohan, China

Seeds are material, relational, and political objects. They can reproduce themselves, embed knowledge, cultural memory, and symbolic meanings, undergo improvements governed by breeders, create economic value along the seed industry chain, and are strategic resources contested by stakeholders. Seen this way, seeds emerge as the nexus of political struggle and technological innovation. To contemplate seed commodification and conservation is also to consider the power relations and political mechanisms through which humans integrate nature and life into the fold of productive activity. To deeply analyse the aforementioned processes, my thesis explores how political actors have sought to ‘govern’ seeds in China over the past seventy years and how cultivators develop everyday modes of resistance to undermine and subvert this control. Conducted as a multi-sited ethnography centred on foxtail millet, the study spans three locations, capturing every moment of the seed and foxtail millet industry. My primary field site, Aohan in Inner Mongolia, China, is considered the centre of origin for foxtail millet. Tracing webs of relations, I studied Wangjinzhuang village in Hebei Province where, similar to Aohan, there is a community seed bank facilitating the exchange of local varieties between villagers and those from Aohan. Additionally, I travelled to China’s southern breeding base in Sanya City, observing winter breeding activities. Drawing on Foucault’s theorisation of biopower, traditionally applied to human life, I extend and apply the concept to seeds and crops, examining the complex intersections between power, technologies, institutions, and the governance of life in the context of plant biopolitics. Three main mechanisms—legislative implementation, biotechnology application, and the dissemination of scientific farming knowledge—control and regulate plant life functions in terms of their spatial, temporal, physical, and epistemic dimensions. Firstly, legal infrastructures allow for private sector involvement in crop reproduction, effectively legitimising capitalist regulation and control over life. Secondly, the use of advanced control technologies, such as biotechnologies, broadens the scope of biopower beyond the individual plant to the intimate molecular level. Finally, the transmission of scientific agricultural knowledge to peasants from breeders, seed corporations, and other stakeholders indicates a reconfiguration of farming activities, potentially widening the power asymmetries between local actors and scientific elites. In particular, the process of commodifying life results in the neglect of values beyond the economic aspects of seeds and the reduction, over time, of plant genetic diversity. On the other hand, government-led conservation has proved to be insufficient, particularly in safeguarding essential aspects such as labour practices, associations, and relationships embedded within seeds. Thus, farmer-led seed regimes and collaborative frameworks play a crucial role in conserving crop variety diversity and the multiple values associated with seeds. Peasants are entangled with foxtail millet in a range of practical activities in production and daily life, including classical Chinese medicine, folklores related to birth, death, marriage, festivals, as well as diverse culinary cultures and foodways. In collaboration with NGOs, breeders, and the market, peasants constructed community seed banks and rebuilt indigenous seed trade routes to exchange seeds and sell products from landraces to sustain the local seed system. These coproduction practices challenge the notion that peasants are ignorant and backward, underscoring the importance of non-elite knowledge in sustaining biological diversity and environmental health. In conclusion, my research contributes a biopolitical perspective to the understanding of agrarian change in China. I conclude that the agrarian history of agricultural capitalisation is about more than only controlling the means and materials of production, as Marxist academics contend. It is also about the governance and regulation of various forms of life. However, due to plant biological resistance and resistance from human actors against capitalist control over agriculture, such governance and regulation are always partial and incomplete and there are opportunities for subversion and resistance. 种子是物质的、关系的和政治的对象。它们能够自我再生产，同时也承载着知识、文化记忆和象征意义；它们经由育种家改良，沿着种子产业链流动并创造经济价值，成为利益相关者争夺的战略资源。就此而言，种子已然成为政治斗争和技术创新的交汇点。思考种子商品化和保护亦是思考人类如何将自然和生命纳入生产活动的权力关系。 为深入分析上述过程，本研究探讨了我国过去七十年来行动者（尤其是资本）如何试图控制种子，以及其他利益相关者如何在日常实践中抵制资本的完全控制。我采用多点民族志方法，主要田野点是世界谷子起源地内蒙古敖汉旗。此外，我还在河北涉县王金庄村、海南三亚南繁基地对传统品种保育、育种实验等开展了研究。 我拓展福柯生命权力的概念，将其应用于种子和作物，考察权力和技术对作物生命的治理。该治理主要通过三项机制实现，即立法、生物技术应用以及科学知识传播，从在空间、时间、物质和认知多重维度上调控种子和作物生命。首先，法律允许私营部门参与作物繁育，使资本和权力对种子的治理合法化。其次，生物技术将生命权力的作用范围从植物个体层面扩展至分子层面。最后，育种者、种子公司和其他利益相关者向农民传递科学农业知识，该过程体现了农民的去技能化以及农民与科学精英之间的权力不对称关系。种子商品化过程中，资本和市场忽视了种子经济价值之外的文化、象征、生态等价值，造成了植物遗传多样性减少。 种质资源保育已然成为应对种子商品化社会生态后果的重要措施。但实践表明，由政府主导的种质保育是不完备的，因为种子库无法存留种子内嵌的劳动实践和社会关系。因此，由农民主导的种子体制和合作框架至关重要。农民在与非政府组织、育种家和市场等合作中，建立起社区种子库，并重建了地方品种贸易路线，以交换种子并销售地方品种产品等方式维护当地的种子系统。这一系列合作生产实践挑战了“农民是无知落后的”这一观念，强调了本土知识在维持生物多样性和环境健康方面的重要性。 总之，我的研究为理解中国种子商品化进程和农政变迁提供了生命政治的视角。结论指出：农业资本化不仅关涉资本对生产资料的控制，还涉及权力对各种生命形式的治理和调控。然而，这种治理和调控总是不完全的，时刻受到人类与非人类行动者不同形式的抵抗。

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Jiang, Pei

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nally, David

• Biopolitics
• China
• Millet
• Political ecology
• Seed

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/52a56b77-4faf-484d-b8e2-8d876934df42/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0009-0005-1147-0408

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/375420