Presentation short abstract

This study, based on ethnography with Ecuadorian smallholders in hybrid maize production, shows how quieter registers of power - knowledge regimes and subjectivation - shift practices toward dependence on kits and technoscience, enabling a high-input model to expand despite socioecological conflicts

Presentation long abstract

This paper addresses agroindustrial expansion from the perspective of smallholders cultivating hybrid maize for feed in coastal Ecuador. Drawing on ethnographic research, it shows how shifts in practice—plant spacing, seed choice, spray schedules, and the adoption of subsidized “kits” of certified seeds and agrochemicals—are made possible and sustained by quieter registers of power. Treating agroindustry as a dispositif, the analysis foregrounds how everyday decisions are shaped by a knowledge regime that legitimizes technoscientific expertise while marginalizing local forms of knowledge. Epistemic hierarchies—and at times epistemic violence—reposition farmers as executors of recipes rather than knowledge holders, impose standardized chemical routines, and establish a “new normal” in how soils, pests, and the living world are perceived, as well as the very purpose of agriculture.

These epistemic power relations are coupled with modes of subjectivation that circulate a normative template of the entrepreneurial farmer—strategic, growth‑oriented, and compliant with the prescribed regimen. Within this imaginary of the “good farmer,” intensive agrochemical use signals progress and proximity to “civilization,” an index of access to technoscience rather than “backwardness.” Ways of doing agriculture are thus profoundly linked to self‑positioning and subjectivity.

However, these structures are not determinative. Farmers negotiate pressure and possibility within the dispositif, exercising agency through creative adaptation, partial integration, reinterpretation, and the mobilization of alternative knowledges. This study contributes at the intersection of political ecology and peasant studies by showing how a high‑input, technoscience‑driven production model expands—and is sustained through knowledge regimes and modes of subjectivation—despite the socioecological conflicts it generates.