We don't know much about Bees!' Techno-Optimism, Techno-Scepticism, and Denial in the American large-scale Beekeeping Industry

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4446253
AutoresLaurent Cilia (0000-0002-2916-5488, Sociology department Colorado University 770 UCB 327 Ketchum 195 Boulder CO 80309 USA, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen60
Número1
Páginas83-103
Fecha de publicación2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSociologia Ruralis (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0038-0199 • E-ISSN: 1467-9523
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/soru.12280
OpenAlexW2981853990
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas47

This article examines how U.S large-scale beekeepers explain and resolve the plight of the honey bee. Using in-depth interviews with beekeepers and scientists, field notes, and qualitative online data, I find that while beekeepers invest in and hope for technoscientific developments, they are also sceptical of the promises of technoscience. I describe this paradox as a form of denial. As both agents and victims (with their bees) of industrial agriculture, they turn doubtfully to technoscience, which saves them from deconstructing and reconsidering the system they are an integral part of and benefit from. While technoscientific promises keep beekeepers hopeful and provide them with a sense of agency, they also prevent them from challenging the larger sociocultural mode of food production at the root cause of the plight of managed honey bees. In their attempt to save their bees and their livelihoods, beekeepers' conversations are performed to fit the dominant technoscientific imaginary and fail to seriously consider causes and solutions in the larger eco-social context

Agency (philosophy) · Agriculture · Biology · Context (archaeology) · Denial · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Livelihood · Optimism · Scale (ratio) · Skepticism · Social science · Sociology · Technoscience · Ecology · Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior · Insect and Pesticide Research · Philosophy · Plant and animal studies · Psychology