1. We Have Never Been ?Human?: Ontological and Methodological Arguments.
- Author
-
Gareau, Brian J.
- Subjects
NATURE & civilization ,RESEARCH ,REALISM ,LITERATURE & science ,SCIENCE - Abstract
This article concerns the utility of science studies as a means to understand the complexities of people-nature relationships. Science studies has a fruitful history of critiquing and furthering the development of how the researcher may conceptualize and utilize the interrelationship between (and within) humans and nature. Notions such as science-extraordinary science, realist perspective-relativist perspective, resistance-accommodation network formation, framing-overflows in knowledge formation all denote progressive steps in acquiring more refined ontological and methodological devices to explain human-Nature relations. These conceptualizations, of course, have developed along several pathways. This article makes use of several of the pathways that provide the most interesting and elaborate renditions of human-nature interrelationships. Science studies practitioners and other researchers who apply science studies concepts to their work on agro-food studies, bring strongly into their work critical discussion of notions of ?objectivity? in science, and the human-centeredness of social and politico-economic studies. My view recognizes the agential characteristic of non-human actors, and it does so in conjunction with a concern in the agro-food literature for the incorporation of non-human subjects into the political economic models of the social sciences. But, my view does not jettison the political economic, ?human-centered? notions of value, autonomy and power from my analysis, as these conceptions provide useful tools in themselves to understand the structure of network formation and the significance of its various actors. I ensue, rather, that much political economic literature was never, truly, human-centered to begin with, so as is the case with the value theory of Karl Marx. Also, the argument against atomistic conceptualizations of human nature has its roots in theories that preclude the works that contemporary actor-network literatures give credit to. This oversight has provided actor-network theory with the capability to avoid the interconnectivity between its project and earlier ?human-centered? politico-economic projects. Therefore, the post-humanist call, although useful ontologically, is not as divergent from political economy as science studies sometimes posits, and therefore a synthesis between the two is a possible, useful project. To support my position, I draw from research that contains significant, non-human actors that both affect and are effected by political economic conditions of human agents. This research is centered on rural agrarian development and tropical weather patterns in Honduras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF