Adam Samms STS Sheep Presentation Page 36-37 • Complex social and scientific interactions needed to be combined. • Hill Farmers were not skeptical with scientists on scientific matters at first, but became very concerned when they noticed how ignorant scientists were on the matters of hill farming environments, practices, and decision-making. • Outraged when scientists would not recognize the value of the farmers expertise • Farmers expertise was passed down orally and never completely documented, leading scientists to dismiss their knowledge claims. • Farmers felt their whole identity was in jeopardy from this scientific intervention. • The MAFF organization understood hill-farming culture, but had no standing within the scientific world and had little influence on the scientific policy practices within the ministry. • The significant elements of scientific representation in this respect were: 1. Its artificial standardization of variations in local physical environment, farming conditions, and practices (hence farmers); and 2. Its ethos of prediction and control, which endangered an exaggerated sense of certainty, and which conflicted sharply with the farmers ethos of adaptation and acceptance of intrinsic lack of control. • This situation forced farmers to loose their sense of individuality to the decision-making processes of bureaucracy. • Lack of mutual credibility existed at a structural level, which was deeper than that of evidence and information. • Each side only recognized claims expressed within its cultural style. • Scientists had a knowledge gap to overcome when they stated things so categorically and universally, before the substance was even reach. • Farmers expertise was not recognized because it was not formally organized in documentary, standardized, and control-orientated ways recognizable to scientific culture. • Farmers claims for compensation would encounter similar problems from an inflexible bureaucratic demand for formal documentation, such as prices, dates, numbers, signatures, etc.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:53:43 +0000
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