Madeleine Fairbairn | University of California, Santa Cruz (original) (raw)

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Papers by Madeleine Fairbairn

New Media and Society, 2023

Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural dev... more Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural development. This article critically examines the promotion of open agrifood data for development through a document-based case study of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative as well as through interviews with open data practitioners and participant observation at open data events. While the concept of openness is striking for its ideological flexibility, we argue that GODAN propagates an anti-political, neoliberal vision for how open data can enhance agricultural development. This approach centers values such as private innovation, increased production, efficiency, and individual empowerment, in contrast to more political and collectivist approaches to openness practiced by some agri-food social movements. We further argue that open agri-food data projects, in general, have a tendency to reproduce elements of "data colonialism," extracting data with minimal consideration for the collective harms that may result, and embedding their own values within universalizing information infrastructures.

New Media and Society, 2023

Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural dev... more Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural development. This article critically examines the promotion of open agrifood data for development through a document-based case study of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative, as well as through interviews with open data practitioners and participant observation at open data events. While the concept of openness is striking for its ideological flexibility, we argue that GODAN propagates an anti-political, neoliberal vision for how open data can enhance agricultural development. This approach centers values such as private innovation, increased production, efficiency, and individual empowerment, in contrast to more political and collectivist approaches to openness practiced by some agri-food social movements. We further argue that open agri-food data projects, in general, have a tendency to reproduce elements of "data colonialism," extracting data with minimal consideration for the collective harms that may result, and embedding their own values within universalizing information infrastructures.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Agriculture and Human Values

Agriculture and Human Values

Dialogues in Human Geography

Agriculture and Human Values, 2012

Handbook of the International Political Economy of Agriculture and Food, 2015

The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, 2008

Agriculture and Human Values

A B S T R A C T Community gardens are often positioned as spaces where urban people can build com... more A B S T R A C T Community gardens are often positioned as spaces where urban people can build community, reclaim common space, and reassert a " right to the city " in urban landscapes that are shaped by gentrification and the privatization of space. However, the literature on urban agriculture often focuses on the struggles of gardens to endure external political-economic processes, largely overlooking within-garden tensions relating to social inequality and resource access. In this study we examined how the pressures associated with urbanization are inscribed in three community garden landscapes in the central coast of California—a region undergoing massive urban transformation in recent decades. The cases reveal that social tensions from urbanization permeate garden boundaries to influence the production of space and the social relations within the garden. Specifically, the resource struggles and social inequities in these regions are made visible in the gardens through conflicts over membership rules, resource management, and theft of produce. The analysis of these conflicts illustrates how extreme real estate valuation and gentrification shapes the particular ways in which the urban commons are managed, including the forms of inclusion and exclusion, claims-making, and racialization of resources that are employed. Uncovering and complicating our understanding of the struggles of and tensions within community gardens is a necessary step in the pursuit of " just sustainability " within changing cityscapes.

The recent global boom in agricultural investment has spurred much normative critique of ''land g... more The recent global boom in agricultural investment has spurred much normative critique of ''land grabbing,'' but amidst this critical scrutiny investor morality has remained a black box. This article examines the role of ethical narratives in advancing the financialization of nature by comparing how agricultural investment projects are pitched and implemented among two different groups of investors: mainstream agricultural investors and impact investors. We analyze the different discursive strategies used by these distinct financial communities to position themselves as ethical investor-subjects while also showing that, within both groups, some form of moral performance is necessary to maintaining legitimacy and profitability. Mainstream agricultural investors, we argue, perform morality primarily through economic and agricultural productivity, while explicit claims of socially or environmentally responsible investing serve mostly to mitigate reputational risk and preempt the value destruction of potential bad publicity. For impact investors, on the other hand, moral storytelling is essential to value generation. Their solicitation of capital involves persuading potential investors of both the value of their individual projects and the ethical framework guiding the entire sector. Finally, we present two case studies—a large-scale farmland acquisition in Mozambique and an impact investment farming project in Ghana—which demonstrate how moral performances can falter when put into practice. These case studies shed light on the co-creation of economic and moral value in markets by demonstrating how—beyond formal evaluative metrics—the everyday moral narratives of investors play a pivotal role in expanding the financial penetration of nature.

New Media and Society, 2023

Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural dev... more Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural development. This article critically examines the promotion of open agrifood data for development through a document-based case study of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative as well as through interviews with open data practitioners and participant observation at open data events. While the concept of openness is striking for its ideological flexibility, we argue that GODAN propagates an anti-political, neoliberal vision for how open data can enhance agricultural development. This approach centers values such as private innovation, increased production, efficiency, and individual empowerment, in contrast to more political and collectivist approaches to openness practiced by some agri-food social movements. We further argue that open agri-food data projects, in general, have a tendency to reproduce elements of "data colonialism," extracting data with minimal consideration for the collective harms that may result, and embedding their own values within universalizing information infrastructures.

New Media and Society, 2023

Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural dev... more Open data is increasingly being promoted as a route to achieve food security and agricultural development. This article critically examines the promotion of open agrifood data for development through a document-based case study of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative, as well as through interviews with open data practitioners and participant observation at open data events. While the concept of openness is striking for its ideological flexibility, we argue that GODAN propagates an anti-political, neoliberal vision for how open data can enhance agricultural development. This approach centers values such as private innovation, increased production, efficiency, and individual empowerment, in contrast to more political and collectivist approaches to openness practiced by some agri-food social movements. We further argue that open agri-food data projects, in general, have a tendency to reproduce elements of "data colonialism," extracting data with minimal consideration for the collective harms that may result, and embedding their own values within universalizing information infrastructures.

Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Agriculture and Human Values

Agriculture and Human Values

Dialogues in Human Geography

Agriculture and Human Values, 2012

Handbook of the International Political Economy of Agriculture and Food, 2015

The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society, 2008

Agriculture and Human Values

A B S T R A C T Community gardens are often positioned as spaces where urban people can build com... more A B S T R A C T Community gardens are often positioned as spaces where urban people can build community, reclaim common space, and reassert a " right to the city " in urban landscapes that are shaped by gentrification and the privatization of space. However, the literature on urban agriculture often focuses on the struggles of gardens to endure external political-economic processes, largely overlooking within-garden tensions relating to social inequality and resource access. In this study we examined how the pressures associated with urbanization are inscribed in three community garden landscapes in the central coast of California—a region undergoing massive urban transformation in recent decades. The cases reveal that social tensions from urbanization permeate garden boundaries to influence the production of space and the social relations within the garden. Specifically, the resource struggles and social inequities in these regions are made visible in the gardens through conflicts over membership rules, resource management, and theft of produce. The analysis of these conflicts illustrates how extreme real estate valuation and gentrification shapes the particular ways in which the urban commons are managed, including the forms of inclusion and exclusion, claims-making, and racialization of resources that are employed. Uncovering and complicating our understanding of the struggles of and tensions within community gardens is a necessary step in the pursuit of " just sustainability " within changing cityscapes.

The recent global boom in agricultural investment has spurred much normative critique of ''land g... more The recent global boom in agricultural investment has spurred much normative critique of ''land grabbing,'' but amidst this critical scrutiny investor morality has remained a black box. This article examines the role of ethical narratives in advancing the financialization of nature by comparing how agricultural investment projects are pitched and implemented among two different groups of investors: mainstream agricultural investors and impact investors. We analyze the different discursive strategies used by these distinct financial communities to position themselves as ethical investor-subjects while also showing that, within both groups, some form of moral performance is necessary to maintaining legitimacy and profitability. Mainstream agricultural investors, we argue, perform morality primarily through economic and agricultural productivity, while explicit claims of socially or environmentally responsible investing serve mostly to mitigate reputational risk and preempt the value destruction of potential bad publicity. For impact investors, on the other hand, moral storytelling is essential to value generation. Their solicitation of capital involves persuading potential investors of both the value of their individual projects and the ethical framework guiding the entire sector. Finally, we present two case studies—a large-scale farmland acquisition in Mozambique and an impact investment farming project in Ghana—which demonstrate how moral performances can falter when put into practice. These case studies shed light on the co-creation of economic and moral value in markets by demonstrating how—beyond formal evaluative metrics—the everyday moral narratives of investors play a pivotal role in expanding the financial penetration of nature.

Efforts are underway to extend the "precision agriculture" revolution from the Global North to sm... more Efforts are underway to extend the "precision agriculture" revolution from the Global North to smallholder farmers across the Global South. Drawing from interviews and document analysis, this chapter examines this shift's potential to redistribute power, profit, and risk between farmers and other food system actors by reassembling smallholder farming from its material infrastructure to its knowledge production processes. The chapter maps the constellation of organizations and business models seeking to extend "smart farming" to the Global South. While promising in some respects, these approaches are based on some of the same problematic ideas about agricultural expertise and productivity that have long shaped agricultural development efforts. A series of critiques are presented focusing on the potential use of digital agricultural products to disenfranchise farmer knowledge, intensify productivity demands, embed farmers more deeply into financialized relationships with service providers, monetize farmer data, and concentrate power in data, financial, and agribusinesses intermediaries.