Julia R. S. Bursten (Author)
Kendig, Catherine (Author)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Volume: 88
Pages: 85-91
We introduce a novel form of experimental knowledge that is the result of institutionally structured communication practices between farmers and university- and local community-based agronomists (agricultural extension specialists). This form of knowledge is exemplified in these communities’ uses of the concept of grower standard. Grower standard is a widely used but seldom discussed benchmark concept underpinning protocols used within agricultural experiments. It is not a one-size-fits-all standard but the product of local and active interactions between farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Grower standard is in some ways similar to more familiar epistemic objects discussed in philosophy of experiment, such as controls or background conditions. However, we argue that grower standard is epistemically novel, due to how knowledge arising from it is coproduced by farmers and agricultural extension specialists. Further, in the United States, this knowledge coproduction is institutionally structured by federal legislature dating back to the 19th century. We use our analysis of grower standard to focus a discussion of the positionality of the coproducers as well as the epistemic products of this form of knowledge coproduction, and we explore the role extension work plays in shaping agricultural science more broadly.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Piero Brunello;
(2022)
Lo zolfo e l'acquasanta. Parroci agronomi in Veneto e in Friuli nel periodo austriaco (1814-1866)
Article
Ross, Corey;
(2014)
The Plantation Paradigm: Colonial Agronomy, African Farmers, and the Global Cocoa Boom, 1870s--1940s
Article
Gabriela Soto Laveaga;
(2022)
Rogue Seeds in Disturbed Fields
Article
Christian Reiß;
(2022)
From Existential Knowledge to Experimental Practice: The Mexican Axolotl, the Paris Ménagerie, and the Epistemic Benefits of Keeping Unknown Animals, 1850–1876
Chapter
Ana Duarte Rodrigues;
(2021)
Jardins como espaços de ciência, séculos XVI‑XVII
Article
Paolo Savoia;
(2022)
Knowing Nature by Its Surface: Butchers, Barbers, Surgeons, Gardeners, and Physicians in Early Modern Italy
Article
Juri Auderset;
Peter Moser;
(2022)
Exploring Agriculture in the Age of Industrial Capitalism: Swiss Farmers and Agronomists in North America and the Transnational Entanglements of Agricultural Knowledge, 1870s to 1950s
Article
Peter A. Coclanis;
(2019)
Field Notes: Agricultural History’s New Plot
Article
Sandra Harding;
(2019)
State of the field: Latin American decolonial philosophies of science
Book
Yafeng Shan;
(2024)
Rethinking Thomas Kuhn’s Legacy
Book
Fabio Minazzi;
(2022)
Historical Epistemology and European Philosophy of Science: Rethinking Critical Rationalism and Transcendentalism
Article
Heike Jöns;
Julian Brigstocke;
Mette Bruinsma;
Pauline Couper;
Federico Ferretti;
Franklin Ginn;
Emily Hayes;
Michiel van Meeteren;
(2024)
Conversations in geography: Journeying through four decades of history and philosophy of geography in the United Kingdom
Book
Anna Elisabeth Höhl;
(2024)
Scientific Understanding: What It Is and How It Is Achieved
Article
Cécile Fasel;
Luca Chiapperino;
(2023)
Between the genotype and the phenotype lies the microbiome: symbiosis and the making of ‘postgenomic’ knowledge
Article
Berry, Dominic;
(2015)
The Resisted Rise of Randomisation in Experimental Design: British Agricultural Science, c.1910--1930
Book
James L. Huston;
(2015)
The British Gentry, the Southern Planter, and the Northern Family Farmer: Agriculture and Sectional Antagonism in North America
Book
Mark V. Wetherington;
(2021)
American Agriculture: From Farm Families to Agribusiness
Book
Robert Wuthnow;
(2015)
In the Blood: Understanding America's Farm Families
Book
Monica R. Gisolfi;
Paul S. Sutter;
(2017)
The Takeover: Chicken Farming and the Roots of American Agribusiness
Book
Pamela Riney-Kehrberg;
(2022)
When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Agricultural History
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Journal of Global History
Journal of Historical Geography
Be the first to comment!