Making a place for alternative technologies: The case of agricultural bio-inputs in Argentina

Frédéric Goulet () and Matthieu Hubert
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Frédéric Goulet: UMR Innovation - Innovation et Développement dans l'Agriculture et l'Alimentation - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - Institut Agro - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut Agro - Institut national d'enseignement supérieur pour l'agriculture, l'alimentation et l'environnement
Matthieu Hubert: CONICET - Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [Buenos Aires]

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Abstract: This article characterizes the ways in which the actors in charge of designing and implementing public policies intervene to promote the emergence of alternatives to problematic technologies. It is based on a case study conducted in Argentina that focuses on initiatives to promote the development of biological agricultural inputs in the context of increasingly controversial chemical inputs. The study spotlights the political, institutional, and semantic efforts made by policy makers and public administrations to ensure these new inputs find their way into organizations and onto their agendas. Their work consists in attenuating the boundaries between chemical and biological inputs, and reducing opposition by creating categories and organizations that downplay potential dissension and highlight the possible coexistence of technological paradigms. Contrary to what the injunctions of technological substitution suggest, we show that putting alternative technologies on the public agenda depends largely on their inclusion in institutional and regulatory infrastructures originally designed for technologies that are likely to decline. More broadly, it relies on the construction of continuity between the two types of technologies.

Keywords: Argentine; agriculture alternative; biotechnologie; technologie appropriée; Biotechnology; Innovation; Agriculture; Peripheral countries; Environment; Intrant biologique; Politique publique (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Published in Review of Policy Research, 2020, 37 (4), pp.535-555. ⟨10.1111/ropr.12384⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05176683

DOI: 10.1111/ropr.12384

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