Forney, Jérémie

2024-09-04, Kernen, Elie, Forney, Jérémie, Yvan Droz

Le pâturage boisé est un écosystème incontournable des Franches-Montagnes, rassemblant un nombre important d’enjeux et d’intérêts pris au centre de logiques identitaires, paysagères, économiques ou encore environnementales. Face aux effets actuels et aux perspectives futures des changements environnementaux, mettant en exergue les faiblesses inhérentes à l’état de ce milieu, les questions de préservation et de durabilité s’imposent pour différents acteurs. Afin de tenir compte de la précarité économique, sociale et environnementale caractérisant la période de crises qui traverse ce milieu, il me semble important de ne pas réduire son analyse à la manière dont les intérêts, représentations et usages humains sont affectés par ces phénomènes. En effet, de nombreux acteurs non-humains collaborent à la création de ce paysage multispécifique. La période de perturbation actuelle nous rappelle l’importance de leurs actions dans les mondes que nous habitons conjointement. En ancrant son analyse en ethnographie multispécifique, ce travail explore plusieurs relations plus-qu’humaines concourant à sa co-constitution, son maintien ou sa transformation, mettant en lumière les enjeux auxquels le pâturage boisé fait face.

2022-11-20, Forney, Jérémie, Dwiartama, Angga

Digital technologies have opened up new perspectives in thinking about the future of food and farming. Not only do these new technologies promise to revolutionise our way of meeting global food demand, they do so by boldly claiming that they can reduce their environmental impacts. However, they also have the potential to transform the organisation of agri-food sys- tems more fundamentally. Drawing on assemblage theory, we propose a conceptual model of digitalisation organised around three facets: digitalisation as a project; “everyday digitalisation”; and reflexive digitalisation. These facets reflect different relations between concrete practices and representations, imaginaries, and narratives, while representing different modes of agency: the collective, the distributed, and the individual, which, we argue, highlight contrasting ways for human and non- human actors to engage with digitalisation. With this model anchored in assemblage theory, we offer a tool for critically and comprehensively engaging with the complexity and multiplicity of digitalisation as a sociotechnical process. We then apply our theoretical framework to two ethnographic studies, one explores the growth of digital technologies in Switzerland as a way to govern and monitor national agriculture, the other focuses on Indonesia, where small digital startups have begun to dot the landscape. By identifying the material and semiotic processes occurring in each case, we notice similar issues being raised in terms of how digitalisation is co-constructed in society.

2021, Forney, Jérémie, Sutherland, Lee-Ann

The symbiotic nature of family farm production has been central in the way that the social sciences have framed research on agriculture and farming. In this chapter, we discuss how agriculture as an activity affects and is impacted upon by families’ and households’ identities from three angles: the idealization of farming life, with associated political ideologies; the materiality of farming and agriculture; and the socio-cultural definition of what it is to be a ‘good farmer’. We focus particularly on family labor – succession and gender – as integral to the definition and resilience of the family farming form, and how the materialities of this labor both feed agrarian imaginaries and lead to negative patterns in mental health. As an opening and conclusion, we argue that those interactions between ideologies, self-representations and the materiality of farming call for new theorizations of identities in agriculture that would look beyond a classical, human-centered, and representational framing of farming households’ identities.

2020-7-1, Vuilleumier, Julien, Forney, Jérémie, Fresia, Marion

Basé sur des recherches ethnographiques auprès d’initiatives d’agriculture contractuelle de proximité en Suisse : des collectifs réunissant producteurs et consommateurs autour d’un projet alimentaire commun, cet article propose de contribuer à la réflexion sur de nouvelles utopies agro-alimentaires, les réalités empiriques qu'elles recouvrent et les transformations de sens, mais aussi de modes de régulation, qu'elles opèrent. Deux éléments constituent les vecteurs essentiels des recompositions induites par et dans ces réseaux agroalimentaires : 1) la contrainte liée aux termes du contrat qui lient les consommateurs à l’initiative tout en renforçant l'autonomie des producteurs vis-à-vis de la grande distribution; 2) l'aliment, dont la qualité et la valeur sont redéfinies et qui agit comme un médiateur dans la reconfiguration de la relation producteur-consommateur. Nous montrons que le maintien de l’insertion des participants dans d’autres formes de commercialisations et de consommations, plus conventionnelles, favorise une interprétation positive des contraintes comme facteurs d’autonomisation partielle et la constitution d’utopies alimentaires vécues.

2023-08-30, Aebischer, Manon Margaux, Forney, Jérémie

Ce mémoire s’intéresse à un projet de construction de la fondation Esp’Asse. Cette fondation œuvre depuis plus de 20 ans dans l’entraide sociale et à la promotion de l’art sur le territoire nyonnais, en louant des locaux au prix de revient aux artistes et aux associations. Depuis janvier 2022, la fondation se prépare à construire un nouveau bâtiment sur son site. Le nom choisi : la Maison des innovations sociales et des solidarités (la MISS). Pour réfléchir à la forme que prendra cette maison et aux activités qui s’y dérouleront, la fondation a organisé une démarche collaborative de septembre à décembre 2022. Diverses personnes ont été invitées. Depuis plusieurs années, les démarches collaboratives connaissent une certaine popularité dans les politiques urbaines. Leurs émergences reposent sur un principe fort : intégrer les personnes usagères dans les processus de réflexion et de décision. L’objectif est ainsi de faire participer les citoyen·ne·s en les considérant eux·elles aussi comme des expert·e·s. Le vécu devient un savoir indispensable à la conceptualisation du projet. Bien que les membres de la fondation manifestent une réelle volonté de favoriser la participation des usager·ère·s dans le débat, au nom de la démocratie, dans les faits très peu d’entre eux·elles ont participé à la démarche collaborative. Dans ce travail, je me questionne sur l’absence des usager·ère·s à la démarche collaborative, en me demandant comment se fait-il que dans un projet d’innovation sociale prônant la démocratie participative, les usager·ère·s soient absent·e·s du processus ? C’est au travers d’une observation participante ponctuelle s’étalant sur une durée de cinq mois que je me suis entretenu avec des membres de la fondation et des participant·e·s à la démarche collaborative. Ces entretiens et mes observations m’ont permis de comprendre le choix du dispositif de démarche collaborative et d’identifier les raisons qui ont restreint la participation des usager·ère·s. L’attention accordée à la recherche de partenaires pour financer le projet, explique cette absence.

2022-9-13, Forney, Jérémie, Epiney, Ludivine

The digitization of the agricultural sector is connected with a number of promises that have been widely debated in both the public and the academic spheres. But attention has been mainly focused on farm production or management techniques, often neglecting the realm of governance, which has also begun a digital transformation. This article explores the premises of an informational model of governance and the integration of a logic of big data into agri-environmental governance in Switzerland. More specifically, it examines this process from the perspective of the autonomy of the farmers, by looking more specifically at how these changes in governance create or not possibilities for farmer autonomization, in terms of identity, action, and structures. In spite of some discourses that present digitization as a tool to lighten administrative constraints and a way to aid in the independent management of agricultural activity, our analysis reveals a more qualified picture: at the present time, digitization reinforces the bureaucratic approach to governance, and the contribution of digital technologies to the interests of the farmers themselves remains minimal. In conclusion, it appears that the accent that has been placed on the service done for farmers is primarily part of a rhetoric aimed at encouraging involvement, and that rhetoric contributes to making other interests, which are more central to the constitution of an informational governance model, invisible.

2021, Burton, Rob J.F., Forney, Jérémie, Stock, Paul, Sutherland, Lee-Ann

Developed by leading authors in the field, this book offers a cohesive and definitive theorisation of the concept of the 'good farmer', integrating historical analysis, critique of contemporary applications of good farming concepts, and new case studies, providing a springboard for future research. The concept of the good farmer has emerged in recent years as part of a move away from attitude and economic-based understandings of farm decision-making towards a deeper understanding of culture and symbolism in agriculture. The Good Farmer shows why agricultural production is socially and culturally, as well as economically, important. It explores the history of the concept and its position in contemporary theory, as well as its use and meaning in a variety of different contexts, including landscape, environment, gender, society, and as a tool for resistance. By exploring the idea of the good farmer, it reveals the often-unforeseen assumptions implicit in food and agricultural policy that draw on culture, identity, and presumed notions of what is 'good'. The book concludes by considering the potential of the good farmer concept for addressing future, emerging issues in agriculture. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of food and agriculture and rural development, as well as professionals and policymakers involved in the food and agricultural industry. Table of Contents 1. The ‘good farmer’: cultural dimensions of farming and social change 2. The origins of the ‘good farmer’ 3. How symbols of ‘good farming’ develop: the historical development of ‘tidy farming’ 4. Theorising the ‘good farmer’: from common sense category to analytical construct 5. Morality and the ‘good farmer’ 6. The gendered ‘good farmer’ 7. The ‘good farmer’ in communities of practice 8. Future challenges for the ‘good farmer’

2023-06-23, Vetter, Thomas, Forney, Jérémie

ABSTRACT: This thesis aims to uncover transitions in agri-environmental governance [AEG] in the UK through the lens of everyday practices. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork and supported by different theoretical framings, it documents and analyses the mobilisations and social uses of four specific agri-environmental governance instruments in a series of research papers. The first paper draws attention to payments for ecosystem services [PES] and the practices used to inspire market-style transformations in Welsh AEG. Employing Murray Li’s (2007) practices of assemblage the findings show a mosaic of different PES arrangements emerging which serve and reflect diverse interests and needs. The second paper engages with the principles of partnership working to combat agricultural diffuse pollution in Herefordshire. Through the lens of Sheila Jasanoff’s (2004) instruments of coproduction this paper shows how farmers are proactively nudged towards better land management practices by a multi-actor partnership via their collective attempts to re-shape identities, institutions, representations, and discourses. This partnership work produces place-based versions of good farming which seek to reconcile rather than divide profitability and ecology in farming. The third paper investigates the establishment and ways of working of the Pasture-fed Livestock Association, a UK-wide food label and farmer-driven organisation based on grain-free livestock production standards. Using Lave and Wenger’s (1991) situated learning theory this case study demonstrates how a private food label can also act as a community of practice stimulating social learning and unlearning between its members through virtual and non-virtual means of engagement. The empirical material of this paper generates novel insights about the role that such communities of practice can play in bringing marginalized practices, knowledges and products to people’s minds and markets. Finally, the fourth paper explores and contrasts socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2015; Jasanoff and Kim, 2009) of digitised agri-environmental governance with the challenges of implementing these technologies in everyday contexts of various governance stages and actors. This final paper reveals how various digitalisations both transform the configurations of agri-environmental governance practices and agri-environmental knowledge in challenging and productive ways. Collectively, the papers document the shift towards a new art of governing through multiplicity. Whilst earlier iterations of UK AEG were directly aimed at producing policy or market interventions for clearly defined target populations (i.e. farmers), this new art of governing is less explicit about whom to govern and more concerned with what to govern. Overall, the findings of this thesis demonstrate the benefits of employing an everyday perspective to uncover such governance transitions including the diverse motivations and mundanities that are part of devising meaningful AEG practices within a governance system premised on multiplicity. It also demonstrates the changes in power relations and knowledge regimes due to the mobilisation of new governance instruments and the authorisation of specific forms of knowledge and associated learning processes. Eventually, the thesis makes the case for AEG research and practice to become more socially informed, sensitive to questions and relations of power, and interested in the networked performance of multiplicity to act upon its (dis)connections and unleash more of its transformative potential.

2021-6-11, Forney, Jérémie

Certification and standards are key instruments to implement accountability in the contemporary governance of food systems. They are based on the idea that, thanks to the creation and circulation of information, promises to consumers are kept in increasingly complex value chains. However, critical examinations also describe it as a symptom of an ongoing globalisation and neoliberalisation, shifting power from the state to market actors, in particular retailers and supermarkets. This paper offers a new perspective on accountability within the tripartite standards regime, inspired by an assemblage approach and focusing on power relations and knowledge creation, as fundamental dimensions. The example of IP-Suisse, a Swiss farmer organisation and a food label, allows us to identify multiple contradictory power and knowledge processes that are simultaneously unfolding within the agri-environmental governance assemblage. Beyond the expected dominance of powerful actors (particularly retailers) and the relentless bureaucratisation of governance, more positive processes also emerge, including a collective empowerment of farmers and the realization of cumulative and progressive learning through new collaborations and experiments. The assemblage approach suggests that the point is not so much to invent a new blueprint for better accountability practices, but rather to understand the specific processes taking place within a given AEG assemblage and then to encourage the creation of new alliances to strengthen those processes that are most likely to foster experimentation and knowledge. It thereby obliges us to take the multiplicity of transformational processes seriously, as a starting point for developing innovative accountability practices.

2021, Forney, Jérémie