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‘Smart’ Farming Techniques as Political Ontology: Access, Sovereignty and the Performance of Neoliberal and Not‐So‐Neoliberal Worlds
Author(s) -
Carolan Michael
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
sociologia ruralis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.005
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1467-9523
pISSN - 0038-0199
DOI - 10.1111/soru.12202
Subject(s) - sovereignty , ontology , politics , food sovereignty , sociology , big data , corporate governance , economic justice , commodity , public relations , political science , political economy , agriculture , economics , epistemology , food security , law , management , market economy , computer science , philosophy , operating system , ecology , biology
This article draws from data collected through interviews with the following groups: big data and/or precision farm equipment firm employees from numerous countries; commodity farmers in the USA who use big data; individuals from the US‐based Right to Repair movement; and farmers associated with Farm Hack from the USA and the UK. With this as the empirical backdrop, the author interrogates the concept of ‘access’ by way of the phenomena of justice, ontology, and claims making – emergent themes to come out of the qualitative data. This in turn allows the author to conceptually, analytically, and empirically unpack the concept into the following three categories: access, property, and sovereignty. A framework then emerges to talk about these socio‐technical assemblages in terms of what they do and the political ontologies they engender, recognising, for instance, that while access can afford individuals and groups benefits it can also detract from an individual's and/or group's ability to flourish. Being able to identify those practices of agro‐digital governance that afford sovereignty can inform policies and programmes by nurturing an understanding the worlds they make possible.