Prosperity, Plants, and Pesticides: The Ambivalences of Agricultural Production and Herbicide Exposure in Contemporary Argentina

• In Event: 20481 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2. Health and Development

Abstract

How do we make sense of our relationship with substances and objects that make our lives easier and afford our way of life, but that can also make us sick or even kill us? How do we deal with environmental risks and everyday exposure to toxic substances? Drawing from interviews, archival research, and ethnographic observations, we address these broad questions by focusing on the prosperity that pesticide-dependent agriculture brings to Argentina. We ground our broad questions with more specific ones: How do people reconcile the economic benefits that herbicide-tolerant, genetically modified (GM) crops bring to their communities and the nation, and the claims about the negative environmental and health impacts of agrochemicals? Engaging debates on “dark anthropology,” socio-anthropological understandings of toxicity, and conceptualizations of ambivalence, we analyze understandings of genetically modified (GM) crops and pesticides in terms of ambivalent objects, ambivalences about toxicity, and situated meanings of prosperity. In the Conclusions, we attempt to articulate what we bring to the table, that is, what this research contributes not only to scholarship on agriculture but also to public debates on environmental risks.

Authors

• Pablo Lapegna, University of Georgia

• Johana Kunin, Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Buenos Aires, Argentina)