Ontology Matters: The Relational Materiality of Nature and Agro-Food Studies

T his paper has two widely separate points of departure; hopefully these beginnings become less obtrusive as the discussion unfolds. These origins include a response, now very oblique it must be said, to Terry Marsden's comments (Marsden 2000) and, second, exploratory reading with the quixotic aim of finding common ground between labour process perspectives and actor-network theory (ant) in the analysis of agricultural biotechnologies. This integrative quest remains as distant as ever, but Marsden's proper insistence on the importance of middle-level concepts prompted me to interrogate these tools in agro-food studies. These disparate origins explain the awkward juxtaposition of reflections on the labour process, a key meso-level concept in the development of agro-food studies, and heterogeneously engineered actor-networks, an ontological construct of quite a different stripe. However, there is an intersection of sorts, as this awkward pairing emphasizes that our ontological choices are consequential, determining analytical points of entry, arenas of theory and praxis, and normative positioning. Previous papers have argued that the question of ontological choice has not been confronted explicitly in agro-food studies, which remain rooted in the dualist ontology shared with orthodox social science (FitzSimmons and Goodman 1998; Goodman 1999). Eradica-tion of this silent collusion with the modernist antinomy between nature and society , it was further argued, would equip agro-food studies to engage more coherently in the new political spaces being carved out by the 'green' ethics and relational ethos of bio-political movements, including environmental organizations, animal welfare groups, and food activists. These political spaces have widened significantly in the past two or three years, riding the extraordinary wave of bio-political activism provoked by the accelerating innovation and diffusion of agro-biotechnologies. International in scope, this mobilization has ranged from the attempted destruction of field testing sites and genetically modified crops, with numerous arrests and court hearings, to street demonstrations against the wto agricultural trade and intellectual property regime and multilateral financial institutions in Seattle, Zurich, Washington dc and, most recently, Prague. The release of genetically modified organisms (gmos) has been critical in galvanizing and focusing these protests but more deep-seated misgivings