A Social-Network Study of a Conflict over Pesticide Use

该奖项支持一个博士后研究项目，研究专家网络的结构和动态，因为它们与社会运动相互作用，并塑造环境卫生新领域的发展。它将确定并绘制在阿根廷因采用转基因大豆而引发的农药使用冲突中专家与社会运动组织之间的联系网络，并评估这些网络如何影响政治动员以及关于农药对健康影响的新知识。它还将追踪非专家对新知识发展的贡献，以概述连接所有贡献者的网络，以生产不同类型的知识。该研究采用了对动员专家和活动家的深度访谈，档案研究和网络分析；它包括在阿根廷6个转基因大豆生产省份进行18个月的田间工作。研究结果将广泛刊登在多学科STS、环境研究期刊和社会学期刊上；同时，我们也会向活动人士提供一份总结报告，该报告将发送给媒体，并将在项目网站上普遍发布。将在阿根廷与受访者和其他利益攸关方举行的最后一次讲习班上口头介绍主要调查结果和结论。本研究将测试、完善和综合现有的在不同类型的冲突和环境中共同生产行动主义和专业知识的理论。鉴于环境运动和环境科学合作的潜在重要性和复杂性，有必要在比大多数基于案例研究的研究更广泛的范围内探索这种相互作用。这项研究将把两种从未被讨论过的关于专家行动主义和专业知识的理论结合在一起，这样做将发展出一个专家行动主义的对称网络理论。它还将实施一种新的对称网络组织方法来收集和分析数据，它将在南半球一个完全不同的国家环境中测试美国发展起来的理论思想。这些创新将加深对专家运动相互渗透和环境冲突中知识生产的更广泛动态的理解。结果将有助于环境卫生专家和环境运动更好地协调他们的努力，以产生和调动不同类型的知识，以解决政府未认识到或沉默的紧迫环境卫生问题。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a post-doctoral research project that studies the structure and dynamics of expert networks as they interact with social movements and shape the development of new fields of environmental health. It will identify and map the networks that linked experts to social movement organizations in the conflict over pesticide use in Argentina triggered by the adoption of genetically modified soy, and assess how these networks shaped political mobilization as well as new knowledge on the health effects of pesticides. It will also trace the contribution of non-experts to the development of new knowledge to outline the network that connect all the contributors to the production of different types of knowledge. The study employs in-depth interviews with mobilized experts and activists, archival research, and network analysis; it includes eighteen months of field work in six GM soy producing provinces of Argentina. The results will be broadly disseminated in academic multidisciplinary STS, environmental studies journals and sociology journals; as well as to activists through a summary report that will be sent to media outlets and will be generally available on the project website. An oral presentation of the main findings and conclusions will be delivered in a final workshop with interviewees and other stakeholders in Argentina.This study will test, refine, and synthesize existing theories of the co-production of activism and expertise within different types of conflicts and settings. Given the potential importance and complexity of the cooperation of environmental movements and environmental sciences, there is a need for research that explores this interaction within a broader scope than most case- study-based research. The study will bring together two theories about expert activism and expertise that have never been brought into conversation, and in doing so it will develop a symmetrical-network theory of expert activism. It will also implement a new symmetrical network-organizational approach to data collection and analysis, and it will test theoretical ideas developed in the US in a fundamentally different national setting in the global South. These innovations will deepen understanding of expert-movement interpenetration and the broader dynamics of knowledge production within environmental conflicts. The results will help environmental health experts and environmental movements to better coordinate their efforts to produce and mobilize different types of knowledge towards solving pressing environmental health problems unrecognized or silenced by the governments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.