Bridging Hegemony and Decolonial Epistemology: The Consolidation of GMO in Brazil

Yuna Fontoura, Morgana G. Martins Krieger, Flávia Naves, Alketa Peci

Journal of Business Ethics · 2025 · Volume 202 · Issue 2

Abstract

Genetic Modified Organisms (GMO) became a flagship of agro-neoliberalism in Brazil, despite the opposition of environmentalists and social movements advocating other forms of production. GMOstatus quoseems inevitable and unquestionable, overcoming resistance and avoiding systemic change in the Brazilian context. In this research, we aim to uncover the formation of GMO hegemony through a decolonial perspective. Relying on longitudinal analysis, we identified that the GMO hegemony is grounded and undissociated with North–South dependency relations in both the productive and the epistemological realms, producing productive and epistemic subalternisation. These dependency relations are based on discourses that normalise a subaltern position and enable perverse structures that take away control of food production and undermine alternative ways of confronting inequality, poverty and exclusion, phenomena that call for further studies in Business Ethics and Critical Management realms.

Keywords

Hegemony, Decolonial epistemology, Discourse, GMO, Geopolitics

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