Tools from below: Making agricultural machines convivial

PDF
Published: Sep 24, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/grsr.24828
Keywords:
technological sovereignty open-source agriculture commons-based peer production grass-roots innovation
Alekos (Alexandros) Pantazis
Tallinn University of Technology
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0904-4697
Morgan Meyer
Centre de Sociologie de l’ Innovation, i3 UMR CNRS
Abstract
This paper explores Commons-Based Peer Production (CBPP) and the democratization of knowledge and technology in the field of agriculture. While most existing academic work mobilising these notions focus on the digital world, our two case studies – a legume-harvesting machine and a tool for hammering fencing poles – examine what happens when those notions are operationalized for hardware production. Our case studies take place in the context of Design Global, Manufacture Local (DGML) and look at the micro-level of practices, and the explicit and tacit knowledge that are mobilised when using open-source technologies to produce tools for the primary sector. We argue that the process of "open-sourcing" tools needs to be better theorised, and we show how this process mobilises expertise, experience, and engagement, connects various localities, and relies on representational practices. Our article aims to provide a better understanding of how digital commons interact with distributed physical manufacturing, what processes can lead to open-sourcing hardware and making technology convivial, and inform future research and policy proposals.
Article Details
  • Section
  • Articles
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (preferably in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
Downloads
Download data is not yet available.
Author Biographies
Alekos (Alexandros) Pantazis, Tallinn University of Technology
Junior Research Fellow, Tallinn University of Technology. Core Member, P2P Lab
Morgan Meyer, Centre de Sociologie de l’ Innovation, i3 UMR CNRS
CNRS Research Director, CSI - Centre de Sociologie de l’ Innovation, i3 UMR CNRS, Mines ParisTech, PSL Research University
References
Petrou, M. and Koutsou, S. (2014). Between the city and the field: Exploring the socio-professional profile of young farmers on the occasion of the "Young Farmers Installation Program" (in Greek). The Greek Review of Social Research, 143, pp. 3-32.
Aoki, K. (2009). Free seeds, not free beer: Participatory plant breeding, open source seeds, and acknowledging user innovation in agriculture. Fordham Law Review, 77 (5), 2275-2310.
Bauwens, M. (2005). The political economy of peer production. Post-Autistic Economics Review, 37.
Bauwens, M. and Pantazis, A. (2018). The ecosystem of commons-based peer production and its transformative dynamics. The Sociological Review, 66 (2), 302-319.
Bauwens, M., Kostakis, V. and Pazaitis, A. (2019) Peer to peer: The commons manifesto. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book33
Benkler, Y. (2006). Wealth of networks: How social production transforms markets and freedom. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Boettiger, S., and Wright, B.D. (2006). Open source in biotechnology: Open questions innovations case discussion: CAMBIA-BiOS. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization, 1 (4), 45-57.
Bollier, D., and Helfrich, S. (Eds.) (2015). Patterns of commoning. Amherst: Commons Strategy Group and Off the Common Press.
British Council. (2017). Greece Social and Solidarity Economy Report. Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/sites/default/files/greece_social_and_solidarity_economy_report_english_british_council_0.pdf
Bruns, A. (2008). The future is user-led: The path towards widespread produsage. Fibreculture Journal, 11.
Chance, Q., and Meyer, M. (2017). L’agriculture libre. Les outils agricoles à l’épreuve de l’open source. Techniques & Culture, 67, pp. 1-23.
Coleman, E. G. (2012). Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Giotitsas, C. (2019). Open source agriculture: grassroots technology in the digital era. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hippel von, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row.
Illich, I. (1973). Tools for conviviality. New York: Harper & Row.
Kelty, C. M. (2008). Two bits: The cultural significance of free software. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kostakis, V., Niaros, V., Dafermos, G., and Bauwens, M. (2015). Design global, manufacture local: Exploring the contours of an emerging productive model. Futures, 73, pp. 126-135.
Kostakis, V., Roos, A. and Bauwens, M. (2016). Towards a political ecology of the digital economy: socio-environmental implications of two value models. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 18, pp. 82–100.
Lemmens, P. (2010). Deproletarianizing agriculture - Recovering agriculture from agribusiness and the need for a commons-based, open source agriculture. Innovation and Sustainable Development in Agriculture and Food 2010, Montpellier, France, hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00539829
Nardi, J. (2016). Solidarity economy in Europe: an emerging movement with a common vision. European Summer School, Prague, July 16-26, 2016.
Niaros, V., Kostakis, V. and Drechsler, W. (2017). Making (in) the smart city: The emergence of makerspaces. Telematics and Informatics, 34 (7), pp. 1143-1152.
Nicolosi, G., and Ruivenkamp, G. (2013). Re-skilling the social practices: Open source and life–towards a commons-based peer production in agro-biotechnology?. Science and engineering ethics, 19 (3), pp. 1181-1200.
Oliveira, T.H., Painho, M., Santos, V., Sian, O. and Barriguinha, A. (2014). Development of an Agricultural Management Information System Based on Open-Source Solutions. Procedia Technology, 16, pp. 342–354.
Papadopoulos, A. G. and Patronis, V. (1997). The crisis of Greek cooperatives in the context of the globalization process. Journal of rural cooperation, 25 (2), pp. 1-16.
Rakopoulos, T. (2014). The crisis seen from below, within, and against: from solidarity economy to food distribution cooperatives in Greece. Dialectical Anthropology, 38 (2), pp. 189-207.
Söderberg, J. (2015). Hacking capitalism: The free and open source software movement. New York: Routledge.
Stallman, R.M. (2015). Free software, free society: Selected essays of Richard M. Stallman (Third ed.). Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press.
Vetter, A. (2017). The matrix of convivial technology - Assessing technologies for degrowth. Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, pp. 1778-1786.