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Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture?

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Abstract

This paper examines sustainable agriculture’s steady rise as a legitimate farm management system. In doing this, it offers an account of social change that centers on trust and its intersection with networks of knowledge. The argument to follow is informed by the works of Foucault and Latour but moves beyond this literature in important ways. Guided by and building upon earlier conceptual framework first forwarded by Carolan and Bell (2003, Environmental Values 12: 225–245), sustainable agriculture is examined through the lens of a “phenomenological challenge.” In doing this, analytic emphasis centers on the interpretative resources of everyday life and the artful act of practice – in other words, on “the local.” Research data involving Iowa farmers and agriculture professionals are examined to understand how social relations of trust and knowledge are contested and shaped within and between agricultural social networks and organizational configurations. All of this is meant to further our understanding of what “sustainable agriculture” is and is not, who it is, and how these boundaries change over time.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Michael Bell, Diane Mayerfeld, and Rick Exner for their support in carrying out this research. Thanks also to Belinda Backous, the anonymous reviewers, and especially Laura DeLind, for reading numerous drafts and extensively commenting on each. Finally, I would like to thank Arthur Mol and Wageningen University for providing me with a generous fellowship during which time an earlier version of this paper was developed. This research was supported by a grant provided by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) foundation.

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Correspondence to Michael S. Carolan.

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Michael S. Carolanis an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. His areas of specialization included environmental sociology, sociology of science and knowledge, sociology of food systems and agriculture, and the sociology of risk. Some of his recent writings have focused on the theorizing of nature–society relations, epistemological issues related to agriculture (and sustainable agriculture in particular), and the processes by which knowledge claims are constructed and contested in response to environmental threats.

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Carolan, M.S. Social change and the adoption and adaptation of knowledge claims: Whose truth do you trust in regard to sustainable agriculture?. Agric Hum Values 23, 325–339 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-006-9006-4

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