Ordres socio-économiques et polarisation de la recherche dans l'agriculture : pour une critique des rapports science/société

What if farming were the exemplar of a knowledge-based society? Due to their many, ambivalent effects, research and innovation in agronomy lie at the center of trends now shaping the world of agriculture. To present this history, the types of pairing are examined between, on the one hand, processes for producing scientific knowledge and techniques and, on the other, contingent forms for organizing collective action. For this purpose, the notion of a “socioeconomic order” is introduced to account for the multiplication of collective spaces of action based on specific systems of norms and cooperation. Studying these pairings brings to light three “models of polarization of research” in France (the Colbertist model, academic polarization, and fragmented polarization), which have changed over the past fifty years. Accordingly, agriculture's recent history is interpreted as the joint transformation of socioeconomic orders and these modes of polarization. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.