Race, Containment, and the Settler-Imperial Politics of the Green Revolution
Race, Containment, and the Settler-Imperial Politics of the Green Revolution By Hossein Ayazi A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alastair Iles, Co-chair Professor Keith P. Feldman, Co-chair Professor Kathryn De Master Professor Thomas Biolsi Summer 2018 @Copyright by Hossein Ayazi 2018 Abstract Race, Containment, and the Settler-Imperial Politics of the Green Revolution by Hossein Ayazi Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management University of California, Berkeley Professor Alastair Iles, Co-chair Professor Keith P. Feldman, Co-chair From roughly the early 1940s to the early 1970s, the United States led a set of international capital-intensive agricultural research, technology, and education transfer initiatives. These initiatives were designed to facilitate a more expansive market agrarianism, increase agricultural yields, and combat hunger amidst concerns of a rapidly growing population. Yet, named the “Green Revolution,” these initiatives, in their push for the development of industrial agriculture oriented to the global market, ultimately preempted peasant unrest and undermined larger revolutionary action as they reconstituted states as guarantors of agricultural markets in service of U.S. state power and transnational capitalism. This dissertation, Race, Containment, and the Settler-Imperial Politics of the Green Revolution, recognizes the Green Revolution as an exercise in the risk management of racial capitalism during a period of great social upheaval: when overlapping, internationalized anticolonial and civil rights movements named the limits of racial democracy and risked undercutting postwar U.S.
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