Boundaries, territory and public controversy: the GM debate re-materialised

In the UK, public debate about the science and applications of plant genetic modification (GM) recently re-surfaced in a conflict between researchers and protesters over a field of experimental wheat crop. Protesters threatened to destroy the crop in a mass action, while researchers and pro-GM campaigners rallied to the defence of this corner of the countryside in a bid to ‘defend science’ itself.1 Yet on the day of the proposed action the protesters were kept at a distance from the heavily policed field. In this short essay we consider the spatiality of this debate – its boundaries, territories, transgressions – and explore the significance of this particular controversy for the wider public debate and for geographers' engagement with knowledge controversies.