In Chapter 4, the contributions of Benton, Mouzelis and Stones, relevant to the broader research question at hand, were presented to the reader. In this chapter, these contributions will be reappraised, modified whenever necessary, and realigned so as to function as interrelated parts of a broader holistic framework the aim of which is to examine the sphere of agricultural biotechnology from an externalist and internalist perspective. The chapter starts with a reassessment and modification of Mouzelis's TAI scheme and then moves on to revisit another version of Stones's SST, proposed by the British sociologist himself, which incorporates the technological element. Within this version of SST, Benton's ontological naturalism is integrated, and this new scheme is meshed with the modified version of TAI. At all times, this critical synthesis is informed by clear ontological premises and specific methodological brackets.

TAI and the Field of Agribiotechnology: Criticisms and Modifications

While the TAI scheme appears to offer interesting insights when it comes to examining changes in major institutional spheres in the longue durée, still there are some modifications that have to be made in order for it to be applicable to cases in which the unit of analysis is not a major institutional sphere (i.e., economy, polity or culture). By examining the field of agbiotech, and more precisely the case of GM seeds or food, the level of analysis becomes both narrower and broader. It becomes narrower in the sense that agribiotechnology is an institutional sphere that does not stretch as wide in time and space as the economy, polity and culture and, therefore, does not play such a fundamental role so as to influence, to a greater or lesser extent, the everyday lives of individuals. At the same time the scope of analysis becomes wider because, despite the relative autonomy of (techno)science, as Merton (1942) rightly argued, it is a field in which social forces from the major institutional spheres intersect and form complex figurational and institutional ensembles. This is so because, although this sphere has its own dynamics and internal logic, the fact that it is new renders it more prone to external influences. In other words, it is impossible to examine agribiotechnology in its own right by bracketing the social pressures stemming from other fields. The purpose of this section is twofold.