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- Convenors:
-
Katharina Lange
(Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient)
Katja Geisenhainer (University of Vienna and Frobenius Institute Frankfurt)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel invites critical approaches to written and unwritten knowledge about agriculture and farming, and the field of tension between them. Among other issues, papers may address moments of innovation, gendered and generational differences, scholarly accounts, and non-written representations.
Long Abstract:
Agrarian knowledge and innovations have long been a classic topic of interest for ethnographers and anthropologists. Although knowledge about agriculture is mentioned in some of the oldest written documents of human history, it has typically been transmitted in unwritten ways: passed on across generations as practical and haptic knowledge, and encapsulated in oral traditions and rules about planting cycles, seasonal and climatic factors. Historically, innovations embodied in material implements such as ploughs or yokes have sparked entire anthropological theories about the history of humankind.
Since the establishment of the first agricultural colleges in the early 19th century, however, knowledge about farming has increasingly been produced, codified and disseminated in a scientific manner. In missionary, imperial and colonial contexts, agricultural studies were – also – a means of standardizing and “developing” hitherto remote and marginal social groups and areas. Yet until today, unwritten ways of knowing continue to exist alongside academic knowledge of agriculture, often leading to contestations and controversies, even conflict, about the best methods of farming and cultivation.
This panel invites critical approaches to written and unwritten knowledge about agriculture and farming, and the field of tension between them. In particular, we are interested how this field of tension becomes visible with regard to moments of innovation, reform or ‘green revolution’; but also through gendered and generational differences, in scholarly accounts, and non-written (e.g., visual or material) modes of representation. We equally welcome empirical studies and contributions from the history of science.
This Panel has so far received 2 paper proposal(s).
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