Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation proposes to explore how situated embodied experiences of research are transformed into written contents. It focuses on the case of sustainable cocoa agrarian development projects in San Martin, Perú and reveals the power relations at stake in the entanglements of research and developments projects and of natural and social sciences.

Paper Abstract:

How does an interaction becomes a data ? What are the trajectories between specific embodied lived experiences to a number, a letter, that may summarize this experience and allow it to be stored, transmited, exchanged until it becomes integrated as a pertinent data within the scope of a research ? What are the power relations at stake that enables the conservation and travel of data ?

By taking the examples of the entanglements of research and development networks around sustainable cocoa in San Martin, Peru, this article focuses on the emergence of written data in a participative sustainable development project on cocoa, next to conservation areas. The project was initatiated in 2021 while travels between continents were higly difficult and when digital technologies experienced a boom that impacted natural and social sciences research, as well as agrarian development project around cocoa and in general. The impediments of travel and the arising of digital technology drove to change participative methododology and higly relieved on data produced by intermediary persons on the « field », such as agronomists but also social scientists, influencing the circulation of information from and to cocoa farmers engaged in the project.

During this presentation, the analysis of the encounters of natural and social sciences within the entanglements of transnational development programs and research projects will reveal how embodied experiences take part in the creation of written contents in the context of cocoa value chain, a global value chain constructed on colonial relations.