Reading Summaries (3): Technoscience in Agriculture

The country-based case studies of commodity systems are the interesting approach to the contemporary research of global agrifood system. From Tanaka’s et. al (2010) and MSU-SAGT contributions, We also learn that the power of nation-state in the liberal market is not only arisen from the economic, politics, and capital force but also from knowledge and technology (knowledge-based economy). Just as the power of knowledge diffusion requires a better understanding of the knowledge-based networks (OECD, 1996) so that ANT and CSA approach are very helpful to trace linkages from one dimension to another.

Tanaka & Juska’s (2010) article illustrated the early phase of the Michigan State University School of Agrifood, Governance, and Technoscience (MSU-SAGT) featured research in the 1990s. This paper is similar to Bonano’s article (2009) about the history of the Missouri School but had had different emphasis and approach to the MSU-SAGT field research. MSU-SAGT is one of the best practices for research combination and implementation of Commodity System Analysis (CSA), which delineated by Friedland (1984), and Actor Network Theory (ATN), which described by Latour (1987), in the case study of rapeseed market globalization (Canada, Japan, US, Europian, China, and India). This paper not only discusses and systematically examine the significant change of the rapeseed commodity system but also provided a critical understanding of governance as the process and mechanism of the network and power distribution among actors. 

By the “simple” methodology that so-called “follow the actor,” their research following a given actor (a commodity in CSA and technoscience product in ANT) and analyze the transformation process, including human and nonhuman interaction. The purposes of this approach are to open the rules of the game and the invisible hand within actors network by investigating and examining their power relation. MSU-SAGT also emphasized the critical role of technoscience politics (interdependence of technologies and scientific knowledge) by comparing the networks, actors, and symmetry that change over time and differ across space.  Meanwhile ANT, as a research tool, focuses on the processes and practices of scientist, technicians, and engineers that constituted the capacity of technoscience in the agrifood system, CSA focus to follow a given commodity from production to consumption and investigate how economic and political activities have become increasingly globalized.

 

Original Article: 

 

Technoscience in Agriculture:

Reflections on the Contributions of the MSU School of Sociology of Food and Agriculture

Keiko Tanaka & Arunas Juska