This paper examines the ways in which nutritionally enhanced crops are made into a solution and how the availability of a solution shapes what is conceived to be problematic. Instead attending to either problem or solution, I explore the onto-epistemological work of problem solving.
Paper long abstract
This paper draws on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Ugandan laboratories and trial fields where biologists are developing nutritionally enriched bananas as technical fix to a nutritional problem. Reflecting on problem-solving as a form of world-making, I examine evidence production that defines the scale and thrust of "the problem" and how it guides the search for only certain solutions. I show that the definition of what is problematic does not emerge from ontological dimensions of the problem but rather from pragmatics of problem-solving, such as what is technically feasible and can be accounted for in terms of efficacy and cost-effectiveness. Inspired by pragmatist writings that posit the co-constitution of problems and solutions, I contribute to debates on evidence and meliorism in STS and explore what world takes shape through the onto-epistemological work of problem solving. I suggest that instead of problems searching for solutions, some solutions may also be searching out their own problems.