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Paper short abstract

Why are the detrimental impacts of agricultural robotics on workers so easily sidestepped? Drawing on the sociology of ignorance, we identify economic, technological, environmental and ideological rationales used to justify why job loss among agricultural workers can be ignored.

Paper long abstract

How can we explain that some detrimental impacts of technology are regarded as unfair, yet others are ignored? We investigate this question by studying why negative impacts of agricultural robotics on workers are commonly ignored with apparent ease.

Agribots are expected to change the nature of agricultural work. Besides increasing productivity and autonomy for farmers, concerns have been raised about job losses for farmworkers and deepening labour hierarchies between farm-owners and farmworkers. However, despite clear indications that farmworkers may be disproportionally negatively affected by agribots, these detrimental impacts are virtually ignored in the dominant discourse on agribots. In this paper, we explore how the detrimental impacts of agribots can so readily be sidestepped.

We argue that such ‘ignorance’ is an active discursive construct. A growing body of literature in STS highlights that ignorance is not merely an epistemological deficiency (Gross and McGoey 2015) but that non-knowing or ignorance can also be understood as a valuable and productive strategic resource in and of itself (McGoey 2012). We argue that attending to the construction of ignorance regarding the detrimental labour implications of agribots can help in understanding how the marginal position of farmworkers is further entrenched by technological developments.

Based on a systematic discourse analysis and interviews with key stakeholders in Dutch agribot development, we identify four central ignorance rationales: economic, technological, environmental and ideological arguments that are used to justify why job loss among agricultural workers can be ignored, acting as a discursive shield to legitimize the further marginalization of farmworkers.