GRADUATE FORUM SPEAKERS SERIES-- Undergraduate students are welcome!
School of History, Technology, and Society
School of History, Technology, and Society
Georgia Institute of Technology
Monday, September 20, 2010
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Old Civil Engineering Building, Room 104
"The Technological Determinism of Agribusiness"
Monday, September 20, 2010
4:00 - 5:30 p.m.
Old Civil Engineering Building, Room 104
"The Technological Determinism of Agribusiness"
Speaker:
Shane Hamilton, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History
University of GeorgiaABSTRACT:
Most academics, journalists, and policymakers fundamentally misunderstand the meaning of "agribusiness," incorrectly using it synonymously with "large-scale mechanized agriculture." The term was first coined in 1955 by Harvard Business School professor John H. Davis, and was intended to be as much a political term as an economic concept. As Davis understood, the significance of the agribusiness revolution was not the decline of the small farm, but the rising importance of marketing of processed farm and food products in an economy framed by abundance rather than scarcity. The politics of "agribusiness" were from the start bottomed on a technologically deterministic reading of agricultural history, in ways that significantly shaped the rhetoric and practice of American farm policies over the course of the latter half of the twentieth century. This paper examines how Cold War notions of technological determinism dictated an inescapable "logic" to the political economy of agribusiness, with long-term consequences for American and global food production and consumption.
More information on Dr. Hamilton's work is available at: http://www.uga.edu/history/people/people.php?page=13
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