A Social-Network Study of a Conflict over Pesticide Use

该奖项支持一个博士后研究项目，该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，并塑造环境健康新领域的发展。它将确定和绘制在阿根廷采用转基因大豆引发的农药使用冲突中将专家与社会运动组织联系起来的网络，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，以概述将所有贡献者与不同类型知识的产生联系起来的网络。这项研究采用了深入采访动员专家和活动家，档案研究和网络分析，它包括在阿根廷六个转基因大豆生产省份的实地工作18个月。研究结果将在多学科的学术性STS、环境研究期刊和社会学期刊上广泛传播;并通过一份摘要报告向活动家传播，该报告将发送给媒体，并将在项目网站上普遍提供。在最后一次研讨会上，将与受访者和阿根廷的其他利益相关者口头介绍主要调查结果和结论。这项研究将测试，改进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。考虑到环境运动和环境科学合作的潜在重要性和复杂性，有必要进行研究，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。这项研究将汇集两个理论，关于专家行动主义和专业知识，从来没有被带入谈话，并在这样做，它将开发一个专家行动主义的网络理论。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，并将在全球南部一个根本不同的国家环境中测试美国发展的理论思想。这些创新将加深对专家运动相互渗透以及环境冲突中知识生产的更广泛动态的理解。研究结果将帮助环境健康专家和环境运动更好地协调他们的努力，以产生和动员不同类型的知识，解决政府未承认或沉默的紧迫环境健康问题。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

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.