Title: Bottling water, greening farmers: the socio-technical and managerial construction of a 'dispositif' for underground water quality protection

Authors: Marc Barbier

Addresses: INRA SAD APT, 16, rue Claude Bernard, Paris 75 005, France

Abstract: This paper proposes the description and analysis of the dynamics of an innovation process, which, over ten years ago, enabled a mineral water company to start protecting its underground water and to overcome a classical negative externality problem of no point-source nitrogen pollution. Based on methodological reflection and discussion of the dynamics of socio-technical arrangement in the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this paper proposes a perspective in terms of the Foucaldian notion of |dispositif|. By examining the arenas of the process, the dynamics and agency of arrangements in between actors is captured. Then the black boxing of the innovation process into a management setting of subsurface water quality and of the local agricultural system is analysed as a governance structure. In the conclusion, we highlight the performative role of scientific activities in this case, and the necessity to consider the embeddedness of socio-technical and political arrangements in such management settings as a value creation for sustainable development.

Keywords: management studies; actor network theory; ANT; underground water; no point source nitrogen pollution; externality; innovation; sustainable agriculture; research practices; dispositif; water quality; agricultural governance; sustainability; sociotechnical; sustainable development; mineral water; bottled water.

DOI: 10.1504/IJARGE.2008.016986

International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology, 2008 Vol.7 No.1/2, pp.174 - 197

Published online: 03 Feb 2008 *

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