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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnography at Ghana's research institute, this paper shows how scientific practice persists through relational infrastructures of authority and devotion. It illustrates resilience that emerges through distributed responsibility and more-than-human relations rather than technical control.

Paper long abstract

In Ghanaian science, authority operates within relations of seniority, religious devotion and ecological attentiveness. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork at the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, this paper argues that scientific work is stabilised through relational infrastructures of authority, respect, and moral personhood. While global science policy often frames resilience in terms of technological adaptation or predictive capacity, Ghanaian cocoa science reveals an alternative modus operandi. Practices that may at first glance seem inefficient from Euro-American scientific perspectives here serve as epistemic techniques that absorb uncertainty and coordinate the various temporalities of plants, institutions, and livelihoods. These practices are used to redistribute vulnerability, allowing persons and scientific work to face unpredictable ecological rhythms and unstable infrastructures. Contributing to STS debates on distributed agency and decolonial science, this paper develops the notion of authority as epistemic infrastructure. The Ghanaian example demonstrates a distinct epistemic configuration in which knowledge emerges through dividual personhood and moral and relational coordination. By emphasising how relational endurance can replace prediction or control, the paper contributes to discussions on decolonising futures in the Global South. On several examples, it illustrates how alternative scientific epistemologies enact resilience as a collective, ethical, and more-than-human practice capable of sustaining uncertain futures.