How Do Imaginaries Sediment? The Case of China’s “National Demonstration Zones of Modern Agriculture”

• In Event: Performing Socio-Technical Imaginaries - II

Abstract

This paper examines the Chinese government’s recent initiative to construct so-called “national demonstration zones of modern agriculture”. Drawing on interviews, participant observation and policy document analysis, the paper explores the dynamics by which the current national socio-technical imaginaries on agricultural modernization in China come to be interpreted, embodied and maintained at various scales and among heterogeneous groups—a process which I will call “sedimentation”. Despite being collectively held, socio-technical imaginaries are also subject to different interpretations by the various members of such collectives, in ways similar to that of boundary objects. However, few studies have inquired into the constitutive complexity of these collectives and the embodiedness of socio-technical imaginaries. In this study, I first briefly delineate a theoretical model of the emergence, variation and sedimentation of socio-technical imaginaries. Then I provide empirical weight to this model by examining China’s modernization endeavors and identify the national socio-technical imaginaries that underlie China’s current agricultural modernization initiatives through a comparison with previous imaginaries during the socialist period (1949-1977). Finally, I show how these contemporary imaginaries sediment at different levels and among the various agricultural practitioners, and in particular I examine how “demonstration” works as a mechanism in such sedimentation processes. The paper concludes by discussing the potentials of sedimentation as a theoretical framework for analyses of socio-technical imaginaries and of the role of demonstration in advancing socio-technical projects.

Author

• Wanheng Hu, Cornell University