Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
32. This split occurred during the early decades of the twentieth century for
reasons mostly related to the development of academic disciplines, but since the
late 1980s this artificial barrier has begun to erode, at least in some university
departments (Elliott and Cole 1989; Gliessman 1998).
33. For a discussion of conservation biology as a value-laden science, see Meffe
and Carroll 1994.
34. Altieri 1989.
35. Altieri 2002.
36. See Gliessman 1998 and Altieri 1989.
37. Altieri 1998.
38. Jules Pretty (1998) counted more than 80 different definitions of sustainable
development subsequent to the 1987 Brundtland Commission report introducing
the term, and he argues that it should never be identified exclusively with a tech-
nology or policy (which it frequently has), but rather an overarching set of goals.
Hassanein (1999, pp. 2-6) describes the difficulty of using the term “sustainable
agriculture” in the US.
39. Allen et al. 1991, p. 37. See also Allen 1993, 2004.
40. Many sustainable agriculture initiatives in the industrial world leave unad-
dressed questions about social equity, especially regarding farmworkers. Much
debate of the term “sustainability” turns on whether a practice or initiative can
promote ecological sustainability (resource protection) without simultaneously
addressing economic and social relations. For example, Patricia Allen critiques
“sustainable agriculture” because it has largely been defined as “a natural/tech-
nical process, rather than a social one; a relation between people and nature ver-
sus a relations between people
and
people and nature” (Allen 1993, p. 5). Some
argue that any initiative must simultaneously address all three, but I leave that
particular issue for further debate elsewhere.
41. For a discussion of this discursive framing, see Warner in review (a).
42. On the paradoxes associated with certification, see Guthman 2004a and
Guthman 1998. On the origins and ideals of the organic farming movement, see
Vox 2000.
43. See Guthman 2004b and Guthman 2000.
44. This field is vast. For an introduction, see Latour 1987, 1999, 1999.
45. To broaden STS's analytical framework, Michel Callon worked with Latour
and John Law to develop actor-network theory (ANT). At its core, ANT posits
that science and scientists cannot be understood in isolation from their material
and cultural worlds. Callon (1986, 1989) developed the initial concepts and lan-
guage of ANT. For reviews of ANT literature, see Latour 1999 and Whatmore
1999. My work does not deploy ANT, but rather a more practical understand-
ing of socio-ecological networks.
46. Latour 1999, p. 99. Latour explains this model on pp. 98-108.
47. FitzSimmons (2003) applied his theory to ecology and to the Ecological
Society of America's Sustainable Biosphere Initiative.
