Un biologiste fait une découverte incompatible avec des conceptions religieuses de la vie bonne. En classe, un professeur d'université profite de son exposé magistral pour faire la promotion d'une idéologie politique. Un fonds de recherche des sciences sociales refuse de financer un projet visant à résoudre le problème de la sous-représentation des femmes en politique, affirmant qu'une telle recherche n'est pas scientifique. Tous ces exemples témoignent de l'interaction constante entre, d'une part, l'enseignement et la recherche scientifique, et d'autre part, les (...) enjeux normatifs au sein de sphères d'influence. Les sciences doivent-elles être neutres? La normativité des sciences est-elle inévitable? Et de quoi parle-t-on lorsque nous faisons référence à la neutralité scientifique? Cette entrée exposera les principales réponses à ces trois questions. Après avoir clarifié le cadre conceptuel et la problématique de cette entrée, nous explorerons les approches wébérienne et positiviste en faveur de la neutralité des sciences. Ces deux perspectives seront confrontées à divers objections, notamment celles du pragmatisme américain. En réponse à l’ethos mertonien des sciences, nous présenterons finalement la critique féministe selon laquelle les disciplines scientifiques ne peuvent pas faire l’économie d’objectifs éthiques, politiques ou sociaux. Pour des raisons de simplicité, cette entrée approfondira surtout des modèles et arguments issus de l’économie, de la biologie et des sciences de la santé, des disciplines ayant été au cœur des controverses entourant la neutralité des sciences. (shrink)

Particular visions of urban development are often codified in multi-year resource management policies. These policies, and the negotiations leading to them, are based in specific problem frames and narratives with long legacies. As conditions change and knowledge improves, there is often a need to revisit how problems, opportunities, and development pathways were defined historically, and to consider the viability of alternative pathways for development. In this article, we examine the case of agriculture near Metropolitan Phoenix, in the Central Arizona region, (...) to highlight how frames and narratives embedded in policy can reinforce particular development pathways, even as information, conditions, and values evolve. Using expert interviews and secondary data, we document alternative frames and narratives that may offer different pathways for development and sustainability in the region. By highlighting alternative narratives, we demonstrate the uncertainties and limitations associated with all narratives about development pathways, and explore the possibilities that narrative shifts can alter future outcomes. (shrink)

This paper emerges from and aims to contribute to conversations on agricultural biodiversity loss, value, and renewal. Standard international responses to the crisis of agrobiodiversity erosion focus mostly on ex situ preservation of germplasm, with little financial and strategic support for in situ cultivation. Yet, one agrarian collective in the Peruvian Andes—the Parque de la Papa (Parque)—has repatriated a thousand native potatoes from the gene bank in Lima so as to catalyze in situ regeneration of lost agricultural biodiversity in the (...) region. Drawing on participant action research and observation, this paper engages with the projects underway at the Parque—as well as “indigenous biocultural heritage” (IBCH), the original action-framework guiding the Parque’s work. IBCH grounds the ecology of successful crop diversity within the Andean cosmovisión, or worldview—which is included, but marginalized, in mainstream agrobiodiversity conservation policies. The IBCH concept counters apolitical renderings of agrobiodiversity erosion, arguing that this disregard of biocultural heritage perpetuates colonialist devaluations of efficacious “traditional ecological knowledge” and epistemologies. Accordingly, this paper discerns here an on-site, or in situ, political ecology of agricultural biodiversity conservation. (shrink)

In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this three-tier framework. While the two-first requisites (...) are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots. (shrink)

Globalization offers a mix of new trajectories for agriculture, livelihoods, resource use, and environmental conservation. The papers in this issue share elements that advance our understanding of these new trajectories. The shared elements suggest an approach that places stress on: (i) the common ground of theoretical concepts (local-global interactions), methodologies (case study design), and analytical frameworks (spatio-temporal emphasis); (ii) farm-level economic diversification and the dynamics of agricultural intensification-disintensification; (iii) the pervasive role of agricultural as well as environmental institutions, organizations, and (...) governance issues; (iv) the ‹agency of nature’ that blends the roles of non-human organisms and the cultural and social practices of people both at the local scale and beyond; (v) the framing of sustainability initiatives and outcomes through the perspective of historical change; (vi)␣spatial environmental dynamics of the ‹new geographics of environmental conservation’ that impact agriculture, food production, and resource management; and (vii) successful and promising policies, projects, and developments mapping out possible spaces of hope for agricultural sustainability, aquitable development, and food security. The adoption and application of these elements is successful also in avoiding the tendency toward just-so accounts or overly simplified stories of agrarian and environment successes amid the often grim realities of globalization and its impacts. (shrink)

It is almost a truism that nature is social, but by what means is nature made social at the level of the interactional encounter? While the transformation of society/nature relationships is often approached through the problematic of distance, and at the scale of macro-historical transformation, this article uses a conflict between American birdwatchers and ornithologists over scientific “collecting” (literally, the killing of birds) to examine the processes through which individuals come to know nature, and come to know it so differently. (...) With John Dewey’s (1958 [1925]) “experience” as the unit of analysis, I trace changes in each group’s experience with birds over the past century; the phenomenology of the resulting encounters; and the understanding that emerges from each in order to understand (1) how, empirically, these two very different loves of birds are formed, and (2) knowledge of nature as an affective sensibility shaped by experiences of closeness. (shrink)

The promotion of conservation agriculture for smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa is subject to ongoing scholarly and public debate regarding the evidence-base and the agenda-setting power of involved stakeholders. We undertake a political analysis of CA in Zambia that combines a qualitative case study of a flagship CA initiative with a quantitative analysis of a nationally representative dataset on agricultural practices. This analysis moves from an investigation of the knowledge politics to a study of how the political agendas of the actors (...) involved are shaping agrarian practices. From its initial focus on CA as soil conservation and sustainable agriculture, the framing of the initiative has evolved to accommodate shifting trends in the policy arena. In tandem with the increased focus on climate adaptation, we see an increased emphasis on private sector-led modernisation. The initiative has shifted its target group from the poorest smallholders to prospective commercial farmers, and has forged connections between its farmer-to-farmer extension network and private input suppliers and service providers. The link between CA and input intensification is reflected in national statistics as a significantly higher usage of herbicides, pesticides and mineral fertilizer on fields under CA tillage compared to other fields. We argue that the environmental and participation agendas are used to buttress CA as an environmentally and socially sustainable agricultural development strategy, while the prevailing practice is the result of a common vision for a private sector-led agricultural development shared between the implementing organisation, the donor and international organisations promoting a new green revolution in Africa. (shrink)

This paper analyses the use of metaphor in discourses around the “superweed” Palmer amaranth. Most weed scientists associated with the US public agricultural extension system dismiss the term superweed. However, together with the media, they indirectly encourage aggressive control practices by actively diffusing the framing of herbicide resistant Palmer amaranth as an existential threat that should be eradicated at any cost. We use argumentative discourse analysis to better understand this process. We analyze a corpus consisting of reports, policy briefs, and (...) press releases produced by state extension services, as well as articles from professional and popular magazines and newspapers quoting extension specialists and/or public sector weed scientists or agronomists. We show how the superweed discourse is powered by negative metaphors, and legitimizes aggressive steps to eradicate the weed. This discourse reinforces the farmers’ techno-optimism master frame, contributes to deskilling of farmers and sidelines ethical concerns. (shrink)

The nutrition transition—a process of dietary change that describes the shift to calorie-dense, higher fat and protein diets from cereal based ones—is happening in India. This paper argues that relatively little is known about the nature of nutrition transition in India. This is a result of both a lack of adequate and timely data and a consequence of national and state-level statistics, which render an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of how these processes are unfolding in local contexts. This may (...) be especially true in India where very little ethnographic research has documented the dual edges of nutrition transitions. Analyzing data collected from the Kumaon Hills, Uttarakhand in 2013, this paper suggests the ways in which aspects of the nutrition transition have developed unevenly over space and time. In particular, while new types of calorie dense foods have infiltrated these rural, remote areas, the process has been uneven and fraught with contestation due to preexisting social practices. More troubling is the evidence that though incomes are rising, the predicted increases in high value, protein rich foods may actually be declining. This paper concludes by arguing that the widely influential nutrition transition literature needs look to ethnographic and in-depth qualitative methods to form better policies relevant to the contingencies of dietary and epidemiological change. (shrink)

The Green Revolution is often seen as epitomising the dawn of scientific and technological advancement and modernity in the agricultural sector across developing countries, a process that unfolded from the 1940s through to the 1980s. Despite the time that has elapsed, this episode of the past continues to resonate today, and still shapes the institutions and practices of agricultural science and technology. In Brazil, China, and India, narratives of science-led agricultural transformations portray that period in glorifying terms—entailing pressing national imperatives, (...) unprecedented achievements, and heroic individuals or organizations. These “epic narratives” draw on the past to produce meaning and empower the actors that deploy them. Epic narratives are reproduced over time and perpetuate a conviction about the heroic power of science and technology in agricultural development. By crafting history and cultivating a sense of scientific nationalism, exceptionalism, and heritage, these epic narratives sustain power-knowledge relations in agricultural science and technology, which are underpinned by a hegemonic modernization paradigm. Unravelling the processes of assemblage and reproduction of epic narratives helps us make sense of how science and technology actors draw on their subjective representations of the past to assert their position in the field at present. This includes making claims about their credentials to envision and deliver sustainable solutions for agriculture into the future. (shrink)