Environmental issues are increasingly contested and challenged in the field of environmental politics. Continuing in this tradition, this thesis argues that in order to understand environmental change and environment and society interaction, a post-structural approach is necessary because it highlights the ways in which different understandings of the environment are framed and constructed. This thesis shows how the concept of agricultural biodiversity as a part of the global environmental change debate is constantly negotiated at different levels of social organisation.

A case study approach is adopted and empirical fieldwork was undertaken in Ghana. The aim of the fieldwork was to identify how different discourses of agricultural biodiversity have become institutionalised into accepted social rules, norms and practices. Furthermore, the objective was to distinguish instances where interplay occurs between these institutions and what the outcomes of these cases of interplay are. Methodology was based on discourse analysis and qualitative methods.

A careful reading of literature and case study material shows how in the context of Ghana several discourses, which frame and define agricultural biodiversity in very different ways, have become institutionalised and how the actors from these institutions consequently engage in interplay. Two conclusions emerge from the analysis. The first of these highlights the ability of post-structural analyses to identify several discourses within one environmental issue area and how this allows for an analysis that takes into account the multiplicity of actors and discourses. Secondly, the approach adopted here enables one to reconceptualise institutional interplay to account for discursive and institutional changes. As a result of this, power is seen a positive force that makes it possible for new objects of knowledge to emerge.