Seminar (TURBA Lab): "The Immaculate Conception of Data and the Politics of Agriculture 4.0"

Program

Abstract

Did you know that agribusinesses increasingly trade in big data just like Facebook, Google and Amazon? In this talk, Bronson will argue that agricultural data are participating in the reproduction of inequity and environmental harm that characterizes our global food system. Focusing on the intersections between big data systems and food, Dr. Bronson will develop a closely observed account of farmer “hacktivists” who are attempting to use digitization to contest industrial agriculture. Drawing from years of fieldwork with farmers and data scientists, Bronson will also detail the magical qualities that activists and agribusinesses alike invest in big-data systems. Ultimately, the talk will explore what happens to food sovereignty when emergent agri-tech gets caught up in pre-existing arrangements of power including in dominant habits of thought and speech.

Dr Kelly Bronson

Canada Research Chair in Science and Society at University of Ottawa in Canada. She is a social scientist studying that studies the societal and ethical dimensions of controversial technologies and their governance—from GMOs to big data. She has published her work in national (Canadian Journal of Communication) and international journals (Science as Culture, Journal of Responsible Innovation, Big Data and Society). She has just published a book on big data and AI in agriculture with McGill-Queen’s University Press titled, Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, activists and their shared politics of the future.