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Articles

Growing Farming Heroes? Politics of Imaginaries within Farmer Training Programs in California

Pages 1385-1402 | Received 31 Jul 2019, Accepted 17 Jun 2020, Published online: 20 Nov 2020
 

Abstract

As sustainable agriculture turns in fashion, it becomes a contested territory between social movements and institutionality. In this article I analyze how three popular imaginaries around farming are entangled in the institutionalization of farming training programs, as spaces where sustainable agriculture is taught and enacted. These imaginaries relate to the lack of farmers, the responsibilization of farming heroes, and the social value of sustainable agriculture. Using a case study approach, I show how initiatives are molded by imaginaries that (re)construct and (re)define them as they get inserted into formal structures of funding, regulation, and dissemination. The inherited imaginaries are adopted—and adapted—by organizations both unconsciously and strategically. I also untangle how a politics of imaginaries unfolds as the popular social imaginaries about farming are contested and negotiated on the ground by staff members and apprentices.

随着可持续农业成为时尚, 它也成为社会运动和制度性争夺的领域。本文分析了三种流行的农业假想在农耕培训项目(可持续农业教育和实践)的制度化中的相互作用。这些农业假想的相关因素包括:缺乏农民、农耕英雄的责任化、可持续农业的社会价值。通过案例研究, 本文显示, 在计划中加入正规化的资助、规范和传播时, 假想能塑造(重建或重新定义)这些计划。有关方面不自觉地、策略性地使用(和改变)了假想。本文还揭示, 在工作人员和学员质疑和商讨农耕社会假想的过程中, 产生了假想政治学。

A medida que la agricultura sustentable se pone de moda, se convierte en territorio disputado entre los movimientos sociales y la institucionalidad. En este artículo analizo el modo como tres imaginarios populares alrededor de la agricultura se enredan en la institucionalización de los programas de entrenamiento sobre cultivos, como espacios en donde la agricultura sustentable es enseñada y promulgada. Estos imaginarios se relacionan con la falta de agricultores, la responsabilización de los héroes de la labranza y el valor social de la agricultura sustentable. Usando un enfoque de estudio de caso, muestro cómo las iniciativas son moldeadas por imaginarios que las (re)construyen y las (re)definen en tanto son insertadas en estructuras formales de financiamiento, regulación y diseminación. Los imaginarios heredados son adoptados ––y adaptados–– por organizaciones, inconsciente y estratégicamente. También desenredo el modo como una política de imaginarios se desdobla en cuanto los imaginarios sociales populares acerca de la agricultura son disputados y negociados sobre el terreno por funcionarios de planta y aprendices.

Acknowledgements

This work contributes to the Juan de la Cierva fellowship (grant agreement FJC2018-036460-I) and to the project SINALECO (funded by Spain’s Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, PK612919). I want to thank Julie Guthman who hosted me at UC Santa Cruz for a research stay and helped me to develop this research. Isabelle Anguelovski, Diego Andreucci, Melissa García-Lamarca, Panagiota Kostilla and Galia Shorky also provided comments on earlier versions of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucía Argüelles

LUCÍA ARGÜELLES is a Juan de la Cierva Fellow at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, 08035 Barcelona, Spain. E-mail: [email protected]. Her research focuses on how socioenvironmental transformations interact with broader political and economic dynamics as well as how people imagine and perceive such relations, in fields such as urban greening and alternative food networks.

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