This paper is about the potentials of ethnographic research and writing for revealing peripheral, subordinated and embodied knowledge practices and making these knowledge practices relevant to the debates on industry-led Science in the very locales where large scale projects are materialized.
Long abstract:
Ethnographic writing even though does not have a claim on scientific knowledge production, has the capacity to produce knowledge that often challenges the premises of macro-scale, highly funded projects conducted in the name of Science. With the potential of revealing and learning from peripheral, subordinated knowledge practices, ethnographic research and writing makes these knowledge practices relevant, and central to the contemporary debates on political ecology. In conversation with these debates, I would like to provide a few cases from my ethnographic research in the region of Antalya, which became a major agricultural hub on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey as a result of a regional development project. Since industrial tomato production is introduced to the region, there is a constant contradiction between high praises for industry-led science (based on concepts of efficiency, productivity, improvement, standardization) and the recognition that it is the embodied skills and local knowledge practices that pre-dates the tomato cultivation in the region that make tomatoes grow.