TY - JOUR
T1 - Small farmers, big tech
T2 - agrarian commerce and knowledge on Myanmar Facebook
AU - Faxon, Hilary Oliva
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to Kay Zak Wine, Van Tran, Swan Ye Htut, Kenda Kintzi, and other members of our research team for their invaluable assistance in data collection and preliminary analysis. Ryan Nehring and members of the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network provided helpful feedback that greatly improved the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2023, Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
PY - 2023/5/6
Y1 - 2023/5/6
N2 - Despite increasing attention to the sensors, drones, robots, and apps permeating agri-food systems, little attention has been paid to social media, perhaps the most ubiquitous digital technology in rural areas globally. This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media as appropriated agritech: a generic technology incorporated into existing circuits of economic and social exchange that becomes a site of agrarian innovation. Through analysis of an original archive of popular posts collected from Myanmar-language Facebook pages and groups related to agriculture, I explore the ways that farmers, traders, agronomists and agricultural companies use social media to further agrarian commerce and knowledge. These activities evidence that farmers use Facebook not only to exchange market or planting information, but also to interact in ways structured by existing social, political and economic relations. More broadly, my analysis builds on insights from STS and postcolonial computing to disrupt assumptions about the totalizing power of digital technologies and affirm the relevance of social media to agriculture, while inviting new research into the surprising, ambiguous relationships between small farmers and big tech.
AB - Despite increasing attention to the sensors, drones, robots, and apps permeating agri-food systems, little attention has been paid to social media, perhaps the most ubiquitous digital technology in rural areas globally. This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media as appropriated agritech: a generic technology incorporated into existing circuits of economic and social exchange that becomes a site of agrarian innovation. Through analysis of an original archive of popular posts collected from Myanmar-language Facebook pages and groups related to agriculture, I explore the ways that farmers, traders, agronomists and agricultural companies use social media to further agrarian commerce and knowledge. These activities evidence that farmers use Facebook not only to exchange market or planting information, but also to interact in ways structured by existing social, political and economic relations. More broadly, my analysis builds on insights from STS and postcolonial computing to disrupt assumptions about the totalizing power of digital technologies and affirm the relevance of social media to agriculture, while inviting new research into the surprising, ambiguous relationships between small farmers and big tech.
KW - Agrarian studies
KW - Agritech
KW - Digital agriculture
KW - Facebook
KW - Myanmar
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85158159497&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/4d669158-3128-36af-bea8-56368f2130a3/
U2 - 10.1007/s10460-023-10446-2
DO - 10.1007/s10460-023-10446-2
M3 - Article
C2 - 37359840
AN - SCOPUS:85158159497
SN - 0889-048X
VL - 40
SP - 897
EP - 911
JO - Agriculture and Human Values
JF - Agriculture and Human Values
IS - 3
ER -