Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.

CP485


STS and critical agri-food studies: contributions by STSFAN to old themes and novel challenges 
Convenor:
Mascha Gugganig (Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich)
Send message to Convenor
Chair:
Saul Halfon (Virginia Tech)
Format:
Closed Panel
Location:
HG-08A20
Sessions:
Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Amsterdam

Short Abstract:

This panel presents recent work of members of the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN) that was born at the 2019 4s conference in New Orleans. We are at the intersection of STS and critical agri-food studies, and welcome you as listener, co-thinker, or future member.

Long Abstract:

Food and agriculture have historically served as key sites for theorizing prominent STS concerns and concepts, such as the deficit model and the politics of technologies. In more recent years, high-tech actors’ and venture capitalists’ ‘discovery’ of food and agriculture as a ‘last frontier’ for technological transformation has led to an unprecedented degree of digitization, in the form of increased monetization through big data systems, automated and AI-assisted food production systems, and an explosion of novel food products. STS and critical agri-food studies, or what has emerged as agri-food technoscience scholarship, have tended to old and new power dynamics between influential agri-food tech actors, transnational and local institutions, policymakers and farmers when it comes to novel (digital) technologies and the scientization of the food sector. Studying related sociotechnical imaginaries of food and agriculture, techno-optimistic or techno-sceptical future visions and their profound material impacts have likewise become important analytical inroads. Concurrently, the question arises how agroecology, organic and/or regenerative farming initiatives have adopted (and resisted) novel technologies, or the scientization of their work in order to become legible to elite actors in policy, transnational institutions or funding bodies. This scholarship has also raised crucial questions about the role of (STS) scholars as both critical commentators and engaged collaborators, be it within agri-tech or food-tech consortia or other (s)lower-tech initiatives. This panel is the result of the open STSFAN—the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network--that started to connect researchers around these topics five years ago in 2019 at the 4s conference in New Orleans. The panel continues these conversations through a variety of contributions on AI in the Spanish agri-food sector, satellite data in French nitrate regulation, sociotechnical fantasies of precision agriculture in India, digitization and biodiverse farming in Germany, and “precision regulation” in meat safety in the United States.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2024, -