Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Making a Place for Science: Cooperation and Control, Part I
Field trials are designed to account for places, but their blend of experi-
mentalism with place-specifi c features brings up important issues of control .
Field trials are sites of heterogeneous practice and interest; the line between
a controlled and uncontrolled setting is blurred in the fi eld, creating a
tension between the need for cooperation and the desire for control. Advi-
sors and growers each want to control what happens in the fi eld, but not
always for the same reasons. Steven Shapin's study of the foundations of
the laboratory and its image as a unique space for science makes an inter-
esting contrast here. Shapin goes back to the seventeenth century, when
Robert Boyle and other members of the Royal Society were establishing
a new, experimental form of science. One unresolved aspect of the early
experimental life was access to the setting for experiments—who could
come in, and what behaviors were appropriate for this space? Eventually
the lab was cordoned off from the rest of the world, both physically and
symbolically (Shapin 1988b; Gieryn 1998). Experiments in the fi eld,
though, are diffi cult to sequester in this sense, both in terms of the people
and the things that might enter the fi eld and disturb a trial. Agriculture is
a constantly changing intervention, and so advisors' work is partly shaped
in reaction to this fl ux. Control over the fi eld is negotiated and renegoti-
ated with each instance of a trial and represents a considerable amount of
worry and effort for advisors. In this section I describe how advisors coop-
erate with growers but also how each group attempts to control the other's
activities.
To consider the problem of control in the fi eld more fully, it is important
to understand the relationship between advisors and the growers who
participate in their research trials. In order for farm advisors to invest their
research with an image of realistic, on-the-farm results, they need to gain
access to growers' land. In addition to the realism provided by research
in growers' own fi elds, there are other distinct advantages for the advisors
from this arrangement. First, having the trial in a grower's fi eld saves the
advisors from having to grow their own crop as part of the experiment.
Not only are the advisors and their staff nonexperts in growing a crop, but
in many cases it can be particularly diffi cult to bring a crop to maturity.
Thus, if the crop fails, it could cause the experiment to fail as well. Second,
and related to the fi rst point, grower practices tend to be relatively uniform
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