Developing a sociotechnical approach to study agrifood systems: an ethnographic analysis of plant diseases management in the Andes

Notwithstanding the increasing research on agrifood systems vulnerabilities, a major area of concern to be studied by the social sciences is the management of plant diseases.

This is a pressing issue, since currently plant diseases have the potential of turning into epidemics which could affect crops and threaten the global access to food.

The project seeks to develop an empirical approach that attends to the technical, practical, and social specificities of the interrelations between technological systems and social factors that shape the basis for plant diseases management strategies.

In that way, the project stresses the importance of analysing what sociotechnical systems include and what they do not take into account, and how that affects the ability of certain kinds of knowledge to count and of certain kinds of actors to act in the management of plant diseasesCombining science and technology studies theories and ethnographic methods, the project systematically documents the activities of Andean peasant communities and scientists from the International Potato Center involved in the management of potato plant diseases, a key crop in agrifood systems.

The project then investigates how management responses in relation to plant diseases are shaped by sociotechnical infrastructures, that is, the situated arrangements of people, knowledge and technologies that shape specific forms of action. This approach will be crucial in changing, managing, and improving agrifood systems